


What Did You Expect?

by AxJ



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: But not forever, F/F, SuperCorp, Villian!Lena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-05-14 06:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19267966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AxJ/pseuds/AxJ
Summary: Lena is tired, angry, and hurt by Kara lying to her about who she is. She decides to sell Catco, leave National City, and rid herself of Kara and all her ex-friends. But when a mysterious L decides to take the ultimate revenge on Supergirl, Lena can't refuse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for Supergirl and I recently started shipping Supercorp hardcore. Any feedback is appreciated!

The sounds of helicopters filled the air. Lena Luthor stood on the balcony of her high rise building, looking out at all she had done. 

“Lena!” 

Lena looked up to see Supergirl- or should she call her Kara- floating slightly above her balcony. 

Lena let out a mirthless laugh. “Come to stop me, Supergirl? It’s too late.”

“Lena, why did you do this? You are better than this. You were good.” Kara sounded almost like she was crying. 

“Oh, Supergirl. I was never good. I am a Luthor, after all. Perhaps next time you keep a secret from your best friend, you should consider the consequences.”

The helicopter search lights illuminated Supergirl’s face. A single tear shone in the bright light as she glided closer to Lena, but Lena stepped back and pulled out a gun. The move had it’s intended effect, and Lena could see exactly when Kara realized these were Kryptonite bullets.

Kara struggled closer.“Lena, I am so sorry. I wanted to tell you.” 

She laughed again, using the burning in her eyes to fuel her anger. “You don’t get to apologize, Supergirl. You caused this. I tried to be good for Kara. But it turns out Kara, my best friend, was using me. You’re no better than Lex.”

Kara flinched at the insult, and some small part of her cried out. Lena just wanted friends. Her friends. Who had girls’ nights, who had weekly game nights. But they all lied to her, used her, and manipulated her. 

“Lena, please, people are dying!” Kara begged. 

“Let them.”

\--  
“Kara Danvers is Supergirl.”

Lena didn’t notice when her brother died. Her best friend lied to her. Kara, her sweet, innocent friend, used her. 

Lena threw the gun down next to Lex’s body and stalked out of the room, desperately trying to control her tears. Lillian was nowhere to be found, of course. Why would she ever let an opportunity to be free slip away? 

A few presses of a button had her private jet landing nearby in less than an hour. She poured a glass of scotch and watched the mountains turn into the ocean. She was numb from head to toe, but her heart felt like a blonde Kryptonian had ground her heel into it and spat into her face. 

The tears had stopped two hours into the flight. What need was there to cry? No one cared anyway. She was just a pawn in their game. Always a pawn, never the master. Used and abused and manipulated. She loved her friends more than anything else in the entire universe, and she thought they had felt the same way. All of the game nights and parties could have fooled her. And that’s what she was. A fool. 

Lena barely felt the plane land on the National City tarmac. She didn’t remember getting into her car, her driver taking her to L-Corp, or going upstairs to her office. Once there, she poured herself another drink. The burn of the alcohol hurt, but it felt like a kiss compared to the pain in her chest. 

Her phone buzzed. Turning it over, the name Kara Danvers lit up the screen. “Celebratory game night tonight?”

Lena wanted to hurl her phone off the balcony. But she took a deep breath, shoved her emotions down, and replied, “Be there later. Have to finish at L-Corp.”

Kara sent back a grinning emoji, because of course she used emojis. Lena almost laughed, but the stab in her heart reminded her Kara couldn’t be trusted. 

An hour later, Lena decided she couldn’t delay their meeting any longer. She called her driver around, picked up two bottles of wine, and was on her way to confront her former best friend. 

When she walked through the door, Kara jumped up to greet her. “Hey, there she is!” she grinned, her face lighting up the room like only Kara could do. 

Lena wanted to simultaneously spill her guts and fling the bottle of wine at her head at the sight of her. Of course, since she was an alien, she’d probably catch it and ruin any satisfaction Lena might get. She felt her face crumple, but quickly composed herself. “I couldn’t decide what to bring, so I brought red and white.”

The game night continued. Lena couldn’t help but be reminded that none of these people actually trusted her. She tried to keep herself composed, but she had to excuse herself a few times to take some deep breaths in the bathroom. What was she doing? She was weak. Lex and Lillian would have already exacted their revenge if they had been betrayed as she was. Her emotions got the best of her again and again, no matter how hard she tried to get rid of them. 

Lena closed her eyes and tilted her head back. She was transported back to another time, another place. “Kara, stay behind me!” Lena opened her eyes. God, she was so stupid. She was made to look foolish while Kara could have saved them both if she would have just told her from the start. Rage bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her. She was tired of being used and lied to. It was time for revenge.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is it: my magnum opus. This is the best chapter of any fic i've ever written, and if you don't agree I'm sorry. This is the most natural my sentences have ever flowed and the most in character of any characters ive written. I hope you enjoy.

Kara POV

“Kara, can I talk to you for a minute in my office?” James Olsen asked, standing on the threshold of his office and the publishing floor.

“Sure, yeah, James of course!” Kara replied, walking cheerfully to meet him.

James followed her into the large office. “I think you should sit down.” He motioned to one of the two designer couches Cat Grant had painstakingly chosen for the office years before. 

Kara looked him with a slightly confused expression, but she sat down across from him. “What’s going on James?”

He took a deep breath. “There’s no need to sugarcoat it. Lena’s selling Catco.”

Kara was on her feet in an instant. “No, she can’t! She bought it to keep the publishing out of the hands of biased criminals, and if she sells it, it will just end up in their hands!”

“I know, Kara,” James said, rising to place a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I don’t like it either.”

“Why would she do this, James?” Kara asked, and it took more effort than she would care to admit to restrain herself from going to visit Lena right now and tell her exactly what she thought in a very not-Kara-like way.

“I don’t know.” James replied with a sigh. “But I’m sure she has a good reason.”

“What reason would be good enough to sell an entire company like this?” Kara asked incredulously. 

“Kara, all I got was a notice from a corporate email.” 

“Wait, so Lena didn’t even tell you herself?” Kara pushed her glasses up even though they were already firmly on her face. “That doesn’t seem like her.” 

“Well maybe after the whole thing with Lex and losing her brother, she just needs time. He may have been evil, but he was still her brother.” James said calmly, and his smooth explanation just made Kara angrier.

“If she needed someone, she has me! She would have told me about something like this, I’m her best friend! I’m going to see her.” Kara started to storm out of the office, but James caught her by the arm. 

“Are you going as Kara Danvers, or Kara Zor-El?” He asked softly, and his eyes looked so deep into hers she felt like he was examining her soul.  
Kara took a deep breath. “Kara Danvers.” She said firmly. 

“Good. Tred carefully, Kara. She’s your boss, but she’s still your friend. You don’t know what she’s going through.”  
Kara gave him a nod before walking out toward the elevator, far less angry than she had been a moment before.  
\--

Kara pushed open the double doors to Lena’s office at the top of the L-Corp building. She was utterly unprepared for what she saw. Where there were usually vases and various knicknacks on the wall was only empty space. The couch that they had spent so many evenings drinking a glass of wine (or several glasses, if she was being honest) was covered in cardboard boxes and packing paper. Even the rug on the floor was rolled up and set against the wall. 

“Lena? What is going on?” Kara demanded, walking to her desk. 

“What does it look like, Kara?” Lena asked coldly. “I’m moving back to Metropolis.”

“Me-Metropolis? Why?” Kara fiddled with her glasses nervously. “What happened? Is it Lillian?”

Lena laughed a dead laugh, and it was the worst sound she had ever heard. “No, Kara. My mother is safely locked away in prison, and Lex is still dead. I’m moving back of my own accord.” 

Kara studied her friends face. It was so joyless, so cold that she couldn’t see any of her friend at all in the familiar jade eyes or wine colored lips. 

“Lena, are you okay? If you need someone after Lex, I’m always here for you. You know this!”

“It’s not Lex.” Lena snarled, and Kara actually flinched. “I’m glad the bastard’s dead.” 

Kara stared at Lena in disbelief. Lena never spoke this way to her. They were supposed to be friends, for Rao’s sake. If she needed someone to take her anger out on, Kara was happy to help, but Lena never just greeted her this way. She had never seen Lena so hostile to her as Kara. 

She took a deep breath to steady herself and tried to get back to the original reason she had visited Lena’s office. “James said you were selling Catco?”

“Yes, I am. I figured it was better not to have any loose ends when I move back to Metropolis.”

“But you bought Catco to keep the press truly free. Why sell it to the exact people you bought it to save it from?”

“Are you writing an article, or asking me as your friend?” Lena asked, narrowing her eyes. 

“I’m asking as your friend, Lena! You bought this company so I- _we_ could write the truth, and now you’re throwing it away! And now you tell me you’re moving away? Where you going to inform me of this little decision, or just disappear and send a corporate memo?” Kara was close to yelling, but Rao save her, she was angrier than she had ever been. Friends tell you think type of thing, didn’t they?

“Kara, last time I checked,” Lena started, standing from her desk chair and slamming the files she was reading through on the desk, “I am the head of this company. I make the decisions that I feel are best for the company. You are my employee, and therefore you are not privy to the decisions I make the moment I make them.” 

“You’re pulling the boss card on me? You and I both know we left that behind months ago.” Kara rasped. 

“Yeah, and maybe we shouldn’t have!” Lena snapped. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish going over these files.” Lena began shuffling the papers that had scattered after she slammed them. 

“Fine. I’ll just go.” Kara said, looking at Lena for a long moment, but she didn’t look up or speak again as Kara walked out.  
\--

“Alex, she yelled at me!” Kara told her sister later that evening when she came over for potstickers and movie night. 

“Maybe Lena’s going through something she’s not ready to talk about.” Alex offered, before taking a large bite of Chinese food. 

“James said something like that too, but Alex, she’s selling an entire company! And she’s moving back to Metropolis without telling anybody. I don’t even think James knows that part yet.” Kara poked at her untouched plate, too upset to eat even her favorite food. 

“Well, they did break up, maybe she isn’t ready to tell him.”

“Stop making excuses for her! You’re supposed to be on my side!” Kara said half-jokingly. Kara desperately wanted to be there for her best friend, but after today, she wasn’t sure how she could be. 

“I’m always on your side!” Alex laughed. “But maybe Lena just needs space after her brother. Let her know that you’re there for her, and then back off and let her come to you.” 

Kara stared down at her food, somber once more. “Maybe you’re right, Alex. Her brother did just try to take over the world again and she was kidnapped.” 

“See? You’d need time if you were human and got kidnapped too. Now eat your dinner before it gets cold.” 

Kara smiled slightly and forced herself to take a bite and forget about the day.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the late update! I tried to make this chapter longer than the other two. I hope you enjoy!

\--  
Lena POV

It turns out that the anger stage of grief lasts longer for a Luthor than any other person on the planet. Anger was too soft a word for what Lena felt. What she felt was white hot rage. Kara betrays her, keeps secrets, and then has the gall to walk into her office and demand answers? Like she had the right to demand anything even close to answers.

Lena stood from her desk and poured herself a drink, the last of her shelf items that weren’t packed in boxes. As she drank, she looked over National City from her balcony. This town she had once loved because it held everything she cared about. Now it was all ruined. She had never felt more confident in her decision to move back to Metropolis. It wasn’t a hard decision to make. Once everyone betrayed her, she was itching for a change of scenery. At least, that was what she was telling herself she was calling it. A small voice deep inside her told her she was running away. That voice was instantly squashed as soon as it reared its head. 

“Ms. Luthor?” her assistant, Jess, asked from the door.

Lena walked back into her office and placed the glass onto her desk. “Yes, Jess?” 

“Sorry for interrupting you, but someone sent this for you. They said it was urgent.” Jess held out a cream envelope about the size of a small piece of stationary. 

“Thank you.” Lena smiled briefly at her assistant as she took the envelope and the woman took her leave. 

Once the doors to her office shut, Lena looked down at the envelope. It was made with thick paper and sealed with a teal wax seal with the image of a falcon clutching a sword in one talon and an olive branch in the other. The front only had “Ms. Lena Luthor” written in beautiful calligraphy with nothing else. Lena delicately slid her fingers underneath the wax seal and lifted it up. She didn’t want to damage the image impressed into the wax in case the senders were not clear in their letter about who they were. She slid the thick stationary out and letting the envelope drop to the table, she read:

_Ms. Luthor,  
I hope this letter finds you well, and my condolences on the loss of your brother, Lex. You must be grieving, so allow me to be short. I have a proposition for you. Work with me, and you will get the thing you desire most: revenge. Meet me at the address and date listed at the end of this letter to discuss further._

_L._

 

Lena nearly threw the letter directly into the shredder that held a permanent residence next to her desk. But something made her stop. No one knew she knew Kara was Supergirl. She had already gotten her revenge on Lex, and Lillian didn’t know Lena had killed her brother, so couldn’t be orchestrating this from her prison cell. However, Lena was curious as to why Lillian had so quickly surrendered herself back into prison after Lex was defeated. She sighed. She hadn’t spoken to her mother since that day.  
She glanced at the address at the end of the letter. She knew exactly where the meeting was to take place. It was nondescript and off the grid. She knew better than to take a bodyguard. If she decided to meet them, that is. It could be anyone behind that letter. 

_“You could ask Alex and Supergirl to help.”_ Lena thought, before immediately shutting the thought down. 

Lena couldn’t rely on the DEO or Supergirl anymore. They had betrayed her once, but she wouldn’t be stupid enough to let that happen again. She would have to go alone. Maybe it would be better if she was dead. A different sort of revenge, in a way. 

No. There was no use in thinking that way. If anything, she could fake her death. She had too much unfinished at L-Corp, and she would never get to see the look on Kara’s face when she learned that Lena knew her secret if she died for real. She knew what she had to do.  
\--

Four days later, Lena Luthor stepped out of her sleek black SUV and looked around the outside of the empty warehouse. It was a beige cinderblock building with the various windows that were still intact yellowing from age. Most of them were long shattered, however. She turned back to the SUV and waved her driver off. Better to not have any witnesses. 

Lena walked toward the door next to the massive bay doors that took up most of the front of the building. She had no idea what was previously manufactured here, but it had to have been quite large. 

She stepped into the desolate building and was shocked to find that several large computer servers had been set up in the middle of the room with three massive monitors hooked up to them. The room was dimly lit, but she could still see all around the building clearly. Armed guards were everywhere inside the building; the catwalk, balcony, two at every door, and even some guarding the servers. Lena guessed that the amount of guards inside meant that they didn’t need to bother with outside guards, which preserved their anonymity. 

“Ms. Luthor!” A male voice greeted her cheerfully, and Lena immediately distrusted it. “We were expecting you.”

The man that the voice belonged to appeared from behind one of the servers. He was tall, about 6 feet, with light brown hair and a million dollar smile. He wore a tan pinstriped suit that Lena knew costs as much as her outfits did on a regular day. This was a man that was bred from money. 

“Expecting me?” Lena asked as the man approached her. 

“Well, it wasn’t much of a guess as to whether or not you’d show up, of course. We both know your curiosity wouldn’t let you stay away.” The man said confidently.

“Do we know each other?” Lena asked, feeling incredibly uncomfortable.

The man laughed again. It was a powerful laugh, one that filled up a whole room and reassured the person making a joke that they had made their punchline. Lena was familiar with the type, many of the men that held the various business meetings and charity galas used the laugh to win over their competition or make friends with potential allies. 

“No, Ms. Luther, we don’t know each other. Well, I know you, but you don’t know me. My name is Daniel Atlas.” 

Lena suppressed a shiver that went down her spine. How could he possibly know her? Especially well enough to expect her to come to a shady meeting in an abandoned warehouse? She pushed the feeling into a box and shoved it down. It was becoming rather full in the box storage in her mind these days. 

“Daniel Atlas, have I heard that name before?” Lena asked, plastering a look on her face she only used when talking business. 

“Of course you have, darling,” Daniel smiled his too-straight smile again, and Lena wanted to punch him. “I own Atlas Inc., based out of Metropolis.” 

“Atlas Inc., of course!” Lena smiled and equally sleezy smile at him, and the look on his face made her _really_ want to punch him. “You must own half of Metropolis now that I’ve moved to National City.” 

“Oh, well word on the street is you’re going to be coming back to my neck of the woods soon.” He motioned with his hand as he turned from her slightly. “Come, walk with me?” 

Lena followed with him, and Daniel set an easy pace as they began to head back to the computer servers he had originally been at when she walked in. 

“Daniel, forgive me if I’m being to forward, but what is it that you do here?” Lena asked coolly. 

“Ah, yes, I almost forgot the reason for your visit.” Daniel smiled at her again, and Lena was beginning to wonder if he had any other facial expressions besides smiling. “The proposition.” He said with a dramatic voice, and then began his booming laugh once again. 

She looked at him in confusion. Daniel Atlas was certainly a character, if she put it nicely. Off his rocker, if she didn’t. She didn’t miss the fact that he avoided her real question totally.

Daniel led her squarely in front of the three monitors. They were on, as evident by the faint glow emanating from the screen, but the screen was black. The monitors had to be 40 inches each at least, and they were set up in a pyramid. She couldn’t fathom what they used them for, and Daniel wasn’t exactly being forthcoming. 

“Ms. Luthor, I’d like you to meet my boss.” Just then, the monitors clicked on, and the image of an elderly woman appeared on the screen.

“Lena Luthor,” the elderly woman said. “Thank you for meeting us here under such mysterious circumstances.”

Lena crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side slightly, trying her best to give off a cool exterior. “And why the need for such mysterious circumstances? You obviously know a lot about me.”

“Well, you can never be too careful these days, can you?” 

“No, I suppose you can’t.” Lena agreed, nodding slightly. She didn’t tell anyone about the letter either, when she obviously could have. Not that there was anyone left to tell anyway. 

Boxes. Boxes, boxes, boxes. Lena shifted her weight forward again, trying to focus on the conversation at hand. “So what exactly is this proposition?” 

The elderly lady smiled slightly, her beady eyes focused on Lena as if she were a new toy. “I know you are reeling after the revelation that Kara Danvers is Supergirl. I would like to offer you a way to make her feel the same pain you are feeling right now. However, it comes with a price, of course.”

Lena stayed silent, waiting.

“In exchange for your revenge on Supergirl, you will help us reorganize the Children of Liberty. As a real force this time, with weapons that could cause a real effect. You have the tech, Ms. Luthor, and we have the means to get it done.”

“You want me to help you arm a bunch of racist monsters?” Lena practically laughed at the absurdity. “If you have the means to organize them, surely you could afford to arm each of them.” 

“Yes, yes, of course we have the money to arm them. But you are the best, Lena Luthor. We know you have made plenty of weapons to combat aliens at the DEO. We aren’t talking mere machine guns and side arms. We want you to arm them with weapons that no alien could even touch, especially not Supergirl.”

“And what do you get out of arming the Children of Liberty?” Lena asked. “What is your stake in this?”

The elderly woman smiled again, and it was a smile that Lucifer himself would shy away from. “We get our biggest threat eliminated.”

Lena considered for a moment. If she rearmed the Children of Liberty, even if this woman could get them reorganized after the death of Agent Liberty, she would be enabling a group of racist monsters to roam the streets, potentially killing every alien in their path. It would be the biggest betrayal possible to Supergirl-to Kara. To all of her alien employees that trusted her and L-Corp to protect them from anti-alien protesters. But if she didn’t, she honestly didn’t know what this group would do to her now that she knew their plan. The tech that Lena could build for these people, especially now that she had an inside knowledge of the DEO and their alien registry...it could devastate the alien population on earth, not to mention killing any falsely identified humans, and Lena had no doubt that the difference really didn’t matter to these people. 

“Well, Ms. Luthor?”  
\--

Kara POV

_The day Lena meets with Daniel Atlas_

Kara was working dutifully at her desk and trying not to think about Lena when her phone rang. Sighing, she saved her new article and picked up the phone, Alex’s name lighting up across the screen. 

“Alex, what’s up?”

“Kara, we’ve got a robbery on the corner of 2nd Avenue and Hollywood.” 

“I’m on my way.” she said, already running for the elevator.

When Kara arrived on the site of the robbery, everything seemed quiet. She was hovering around the fourth floor, canvasing the area. The building in question was just a normal apartment building, and it seemed to be in a safe neighborhood. No sign of a robbery. 

“Alex, are you sure this is the place?” Kara asked, flying in a slow circle around the building. 

“Yes, that’s where the caller said to go over the police scanner.” Alex replied over the comms. “Why?”

“Well, there doesn’t seem to be anything here.” She scanned the interior of the building with her x-ray vision, but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Most of the apartments were lived in but currently empty, except for a few apartments that were occupied but she didn’t notice anyone doing anything abnormal. 

“Alex, are you sure, I don’t see-“At that moment, two men appeared seemingly out of thin air, dressed in all black and holding black duffel bags. “Never mind!” Kara called to the comm and darted towards the two men.

The two men appeared and disappeared as they ran down the sidewalk. Kara flew after them, catching up easily, but any time she tried to grab at them they disappeared and reappeared several feet away. Kara flew up high, watching for a split second before flying ahead, grabbing a street light and laying it directly into their path. The men hit it a second later, sending them flying head over heels into the pavement. They groaned and coughed loudly, and Kara set up the lamppost again to avoid any car crashes and approached the men, grabbing them by their shirt collars and hauling them to their feet.  
-

After the two men were apprehended and taken into DEO custody, Alex and Kara met back at the DEO headquarters. 

“Brainy, do we know why those two were able to disappear so thouroughly that even my x-ray vision couldn’t spot them?” Kara asked, approaching the large round computer in the center of the room. 

“Not yet. But my guess would be that they are using some kind of advanced cloaking device not yet seen in this century.” Brainy responded, his fingertips typing deftly on his tablet. Kara sometimes wondered if using the technology from this century often frustrated him, as it was probably considered primal by his standards. 

“How would two thugs get a cloaking device from a different century?” Alex asked.

“Well, there are currently three people on this planet capable of making such a device. The question is, which one of them has already done so?” Brainy explained. 

“And those three people are...” Alex trailed impatiently.

“Ah, yes, of course,” Brainy said quickly. “Lena Luthor, Daniel Atlas, and us here at the DEO.”

“The DEO obviously didn’t do it.” Kara said. “And I don’t remember Lena making any cloaking device.” 

“Kara, when was the last time you actually talked to Lena?” Alex asked, and Kara flinched slightly and crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s what I thought. We can’t rule her out.” 

“I’ll...try and talk to her.” Kara said nervously. “I don’t think it’s fair to assume that she’s automatically responsible.” 

“I’ll look into the other guy,” Alex said. “Daniel Atlas. Brainy, what can you tell us about him?”

Brainy swiped up on the tablet and brought a large photo of Daniel Atlas onto the wall screen. “Daniel Atlas is the CEO and owner of Atlas Inc., a development firm based in Metropolis.”

“What do they develop?” Kara asked moving to stand in front of the round computer in the center of the room. 

“Anything,” Brainy explained. “Weapons, land, transportation methods. If you need it, Atlas Inc. can make it happen.”

“That’s...new.” Alex furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. 

“Atlas Inc. prides itself on being a pioneer in the corporate world. It seeks to be an end all option for every company in Metropolis.” Brainy said. 

“I thought that was illegal?” Kara said. “Wouldn’t he just be monopolizing the market?”

“No, not if each company is _choosing_ to come to Atlas Inc. having a new idea isn’t a crime.” Alex said. 

“Sometimes it should be.” Kara muttered to herself. 

“Well, could some one have paid him to make a device like this?” Alex asked Brainy. 

“It’s very possible, and he could easily pay the best scientists in the world to make whatever the client wanted.” 

“I’ll go find out what he knows.”  
\--

Kara was totally, definitely _not_ stalling. She had no idea why she offered to talk to Lena instead of Daniel Atlas. She hadn’t heard from Lena in four days, which was totally out of character for the two of them. Kara missed her friend, but Lena was obviously pissed at her for some reason. What was she going to do? She couldn’t apologize for something if she didn’t even know what she did.

Kara paced around her apartment, not even hearing when Alex came in until she felt a hand on her shoulder. Kara jumped, snatching the hand into a death grip before realizing it was just her sister. 

“Alex! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” Kara shouted, immediately releasing her hand. 

Alex shook her hand and flex her fingers, wincing painfully. “Kara, for as long as we have been sisters, I have never _once_ been able to sneak up on you. What’s got you so worked up?”

Kara took a shakey breath. “Nothing, I’m sorry. Is your hand okay?” 

“It’s fine, but you obviously aren’t. What’s going on?” Alex led them to the couch and made Kara sit down with her. “Is it Lena again? Did you go talk to her?”

“No, I haven’t gone and talked to her yet. That’s the problem, actually. How can I go talk to her when the last time I did she basically bit my head off and threw it off her balcony?” 

“Well, first of all, you can fly,” Alex said, laughing slightly. “Second of all, you need to talk to Lena and try to make amends. She’s your best friend, Kara. Even if she needs space, you need to let her know you’re there for her.”

Kara thought for a moment. “She still yelled at me for no reason.”

“And she needs to apologize for that. But you need to talk to her and let her know that you’re not just dumping her after one argument.” Alex said gently. 

Kara nodded, then took a deep breath. “Did you talk to Daniel Atlas?” 

“No, his assistant said he wasn’t in today.” Alex said in slight confusion. 

“Well, we can try again tomorrow.” Kara said. “Both of us. I’ll go talk to Lena tomorrow.” 

Alex smiled at her sister. “That’s my girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How was it? Will Lena take the deal? Who knows! Not Lena!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I'm horrible at character names, esp last names, so Daniel Atlas's last name "Atlas" is actually my roommates great dane/lab mix dogs name. He happened to be laying at my feet when I invented Daniel so I just took the name. It works right, cause Atlas Inc. is theoretically holding up the Metropolis economy by doing everything! 
> 
> Next chapter we'll get to see more of Lena and less of Kara, I promise.

Lena POV

_“In exchange for your revenge on Supergirl, you will help us reorganize the Children of Liberty. As a real force this time, with weapons that could cause a real effect. You have the tech, Ms. Luthor, and we have the means to get it done.”_

Lena crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at the woman on the screen. It didn’t take long for her to make her decision. 

“I will _never_ work with you, you sick bitch.” Lena spat out. “My own personal revenge in exchange for the lives of thousands of aliens? How twisted do you think I am?”

The lady on the screen sighed, but she didn’t seem at all surprised. “Lena, please, don’t make this difficult.” 

“Difficult? I refuse to work with murderers and racists, and somehow I’m the problem?” 

“Lena, Lena, Lena. Can’t you see the bigger picture here? It’s not about aliens themselves! Why would we care what a bunch of random refugees do?” The lady said smoothly. “It’s  
about control and the promise of control. We could rule this run down planet, Lena, without having to hurt a single person.” 

“Supergirl will stop you.” 

“Oh, you mean your friend Kara? The one who abandoned you and betrayed you? Who lied to you for years? You’re using her to threaten me? Would she even respond to your calls after your fight, Lena?” 

Lena paused. She was right, of course. She supposed Kara was what this whole proposition was originally about. 

“I will ask you again. Will you work with us to rearm the Children of Liberty?”

Lena didn’t even need time to think. “I think I made myself clear before.” 

The lady laughed coldly. “I was afraid you would say that. Daniel, if you will.” 

Before Lena could move, Daniel grabbed her from behind and a sharp pinch in her neck had her crying out and falling to her knees. A cold rage spread over her, focusing her thoughts onto a single thing as she rose from the floor.

“Ah, there we are. Was that so hard, Lena?” 

Lena looked at the woman on the screen, a dangerous gleam in her eyes. “Where do we start?”  
\--

Kara POV 

_Three days before Lena meets Daniel Atlas_

Kara took a shaky breath to steady herself. Alex was right, she needed to talk to Lena, even if she just bit her head off. Even if Lena was still mad about whatever it was, they  
needed to know where those invisibility suits were made. 

Kara stepped off the elevator and began walking towards Lena’s office but was stopped by Lena’s assistant Jess before she could open the office doors. 

“Ms. Luthor isn’t in office today.” Jess said politely but professionally, which struck Kara as odd since they had talked many times and Jess was usually quite friendly with her.

“When will she be back? It’s important that I speak with her.” 

“She didn’t tell me, Ms. Danvers. But I can take a message for you if you’d like?” 

“No, thank you. I’ll just text her later. Thanks, Jess. By the way, how is your father doing?” Kara asked, knowing from the last time they spoke that he had been recently diagnosed with liver cancer. 

“He’s fine. But if you don’t need anything else, I must get back to work.” Jess said coldly and turned back to her computer monitor.

Kara was utterly confused at this point. First, Lena bites her head off and is moving away for no reason. Second, Lena apparently didn’t come into the office on a Wednesday, and third Jess wanted nothing to do with her. Kara decided to chalk the Jess thing up to stress of a family member being diagnosed with cancer. That kind of thing tended to warrant an emotional response. Whenever Lena spoke to her again, she would have to convince her to give Jess a day off. 

Sighing, she decided to head back to the DEO to finish finding out about the cloaking devices. Before she got into the elevator, she shot Lena a quick text. 

_“Need to talk to you. Where are you?”_

If Daniel Atlas and Lena were both unavailable, then they only had one more option: the would-be thieves that were using the tech in the first place. Kara flashed into her super suit in the elevator and flew back to the DEO faster than a speeding bullet. 

When she arrived through the grand window of the DEO, Alex was already waiting for her. 

“Did you talk to Daniel Atlas?” Kara asked as she landed next to her sister. 

“No, it’s weird, his assistant said he hasn’t been seen in nearly a week.” Alex said, confusion contorting her face. 

“You went there yesterday and she didn’t tell you?”

Alex snorted. “No, apparently she ‘didn’t trust’ that I was FBI, even though I practically shoved my ID down her throat when I got to the building.” 

Kara smiled at the image, then realized something important. “Alex, Lena wasn’t in her office today either. And when I talked to Jess, she acted like I had spat in her coffee.” 

“But Lena was there yesterday, right? When you didn’t go?” 

“Well, Jess didn’t mention anything about yesterday.” Kara said, thinking. “But why did Jess act so cold with me?” 

“I don’t know, Kara. But we can think about that later. Right now, we need to focus on who’s arming aliens with cloaking devices so good even you can’t see through them.” 

Kara nodded, trying to shake off the feeling of dread that was creeping over her like ice. “Let’s go talk to the two that were using the tech.” 

Alex and Kara walked silently to the containment wing, passing aliens and metahumans alike that banged on the glass as they passed. It didn’t bother Kara in the slightest-they were just continuously proving they deserved to be in those cells. 

They reached the twin cells that held the aliens from the robbery. Kara hadn’t had a good look at them since she was more focused on catching them, but now that they were standing in front of her, she could see how beautiful they were. Both of them had pale green skin, and instead of traditional hair like humans and Kryptonians had, they had leaves. 

“Supergirl!” One of them exclaimed breathlessly. “Please, let us out. We didn’t have a choice!” 

Kara looked at them confusedly. “What do you mean, you didn’t have a choice?” 

The other green alien hissed at the one who spoke first. “Be quiet, you idiot. We can still face the consequences if we talk.” 

The first alien’s face fell. “I don’t want to spend my life in a cell for something I didn’t choose to do.” 

Kara paused for a brief moment. “What are your names?” 

The first alien looked up. “I am Ky’rin, of the race Alstairean.” 

“And I am Hy’rin, also of the Alstairean race.” 

“Alstaireans, of course.” Kara mused. “That explains the hair. What brings you to Earth?” Kara asked warily.

“Do not fear, Kryptonian.” Hy’rin said amusedly, catching her tone. “We aren’t here to take over the planet. In fact, that’s the exact thing we were running from. Our leaders are still hunting endlessly to...put down roots, as it were. But we don’t see how taking over a different planet makes us any different than those who destroyed our home.” 

Kara nodded understandingly. “I know what it’s like to lose your home, and I’m sorry. But the last I heard, an Alstairean was in Gotham.” 

Ky’rin cringed slightly. “I guess news travels fast these days, even between dimensions. After the other was defeated, we made it to S.T.A.R Labs and begged for help. The same people who killed the other would soon be hunting us, and after what he did, we knew they wouldn’t stop to ask questions. The people there helped us through a portal that brought us here.” 

She guessed she shouldn’t be surprised. Barry was always willing to help those in need, just like her. From what she knew of Kate Kane and the Batwoman, she could understand the two Alstairean’s fear. 

Alex stepped forward. “So how did you come across two highly advanced cloaking devices?” 

Ky’rin and Hy’rin fell silent. 

“Come on guys, I thought we were friends?” Kara prompted. “Is someone threatening you? If so, I will protect you.” 

“Those that threaten us are not ones you can fight.” Hy’rin said darkly. 

Kara scoffed and said “You don’t know what we’re capable of.” 

“But I know what _they_ are capable of.” 

“We need to know where you got the technology, and why you used it to commit what’s honestly a low level robbery. You could do so much more with technology like that, why hit a basically abandoned apartment building in the rough side of town?” Alex challenged the two Alstaireans, and Kara gave her a warning look.

Ky’rin broke first. “It was a test! We were given the technology and an address. We were supposed to cloak ourselves and get in and out without being seen so they would know if it worked or not.” she cried. “I’m sorry, Hy’rin, I can’t do this!” the Alstairean was sobbing now, and Kara and Alex exchanged a confused glance. 

“You fool,” Hy’rin hissed. “We’re dead, thanks to you. You never could keep your big mouth shut.” 

“Who wanted to know, and why?” Alex asked somewhat gently. 

“We don’t know.” Hy’rin snarled back. “But they said if we got caught and talked, they’d tell Gotham’s defenders where we are, and give them the means to come here and find us.” 

“They couldn’t possibly know you talked to us in here.” Kara said firmly. “And don’t worry. I know Batwoman personally, and she won’t lay a finger on you.”

Hy’rin laughed in her face. “If it was the Batwoman we were worried about, we wouldn’t have run in the first place.” 

Kara stared at the two Alstaireans. “I will protect you.” 

“You can certainly try.” 

Ky’rin was still quietly sobbing. “I wish we never met her.” She whimpered. 

“Her? Who’s her?” Alex asked eagerly. 

Hy’rin huffed at her companion but said nothing. 

“I don’t know her name. But it was an elderly human woman. She had beady eyes that kind of freaked me out. She found me on a bench near the apartment building you found me at and made me the offer because she knew Hy’rin would have refused no matter the threat.” Ky’rin managed explain through her sobs. “Please, I don’t want to die.” 

Alex gave the Alstairean a kind smile. “You will have an entire government agency protecting you. No matter what you did, you don’t deserve to die because of it, especially if you were being threatened.” 

Alex’s words made the crying Alstairean stop crying, if only for a moment, and Kara could see that it made Hy’rin visibly relax. 

“That’s all we can tell you. We don’t know where she got them, or what she wants them for.” Hy’rin said finally. “Thank you, Supergirl.” Hy’rin nodded at Alex as well. 

“When we get this figured out, we’ll see about getting your charges dropped or reduced.” Alex said. “But for now, the safest place for you is in here, but we can put you in the same cell if you would be more comfortable.” 

Ky’rin nodded vigorously, and Alex typed in a code that released the young alien from her cell and opened Hy’rin’s cell, and the two hugged each other fiercely. Kara could see  
Hy’rin’s eyes shine just a bit, and it was the first bit of emotion the alien had shown since she had been talking with them. 

“If you need anything, just let a guard know. I’ll explain to them the situation in as few details as I can, don’t worry, and they’ll made sure you’re comfortable.” Alex offered, and both Alstaireans smiled at her and thanked her profusely. 

After Kara and Alex left the containment wing, they headed back to the main room of the DEO. 

“So, the cloaking devices and robbery were some kind of test?” Alex asked. 

“But a test for what?” Kara answered. “The Alstaireans didn’t even take anything valuable.”

Alex thought for a moment. “I guess our answer lies in an elderly woman with beady eyes. Not much of a description. There are thousands of creepy old ladies in National City.” Alex said jokingly, obviously trying to lighten the mood. 

It worried her that Lena and Daniel Atlas both conveniently stopped showing up for work at the same time this robbery happened. They were the two biggest tech moguls in National City, and while Kara didn’t want to assume Lena was to blame, the odds didn’t look good. Her friend had been acting weird lately, and her random move back to Metropolis definitely made her seem like she was running. Kara didn’t know much about Daniel Atlas, but she had seen reports of what his company made, especially in war time. If he and Lena were working together for some nefarious purpose, or even against each other, what would stop them? 

Kara felt a poke to her ribs and was thrown out of her thoughts. Alex was staring at her expectantly, and Kara realized she must have been talking to her while she was lost in her thoughts. “Sorry, what?”

“I said, what do you think about getting takeout and watching a movie? I can have Brainy follow up on the old lady lead, and we can take a break while he searches.”

“Oh, sure. I need a break anyway.” Kara said gratefully, and the two sisters headed off to their favorite Chinese place.  
\--

Three days later, Kara was about to break down Lena’s office doors as Kara Danvers or bust through the window as Supergirl, whatever made Lena finally talk to her. She had been texting and calling for days at this point, and all she was getting was radio silence. Jess had taken to calling security whenever she saw Kara now, after one temper flare too many in front of some highly esteemed businessmen. Kara’s cheeks stung from the humiliation of that encounter even now. But Lena was _missing_ , at least as far as Kara was concerned, and Jess wasn’t making the situation any better. She only offered a cold “She’s not in today,” or “She isn’t taking guests right now,” over and over. Kara was desperately trying to respect her friend’s privacy and space, but this radio silence was making her crazy. 

Alex and Kara had been relentlessly trying to track down whatever elderly lady the two Alstaireans had said gave them the cloaking devices. But days had passed, and they weren’t any closer to finding out who it was. Like Alex said, there were thousands of elderly ladies in National City. 

Lena and Daniel Atlas seemed like their best options right now, but both had fallen off the face of the earth, apparently. There was now an official missing persons case for Daniel Atlas, but as Jess claimed to see Lena every day, they had avoided putting one out for her as well. Just as well, as two CEO’s of massive corporations going missing in the same week would send people into a panic. Kara would have to carry on this search alone. 

\--  
Lena POV 

Lena was hunched over a magnifying glass, tinkering over some wires when Daniel Atlas entered the room. “Where are we on the iron fist?” He asked tonelessly. 

“We aren’t any closer than we were thirty minutes ago, when you asked last.” Lena snapped at him without looking up from her tinkering. “If I rush this, someone could get hurt.” 

“Well, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, sweetheart,” he started, and Lena rolled her eyes at the pet name, “But people are going to get hurt. Namely a blonde caped crusader.” 

Lena remembered. She knew exactly what the purpose of this mission was. She knew exactly what she was doing when she handed over fifty pounds of a pulsing green crystal to Daniel yesterday. No one in this lab wanted Supergirl dead more than her. 

“Daniel, darling,” Lena said with a sickening sweetness as she finally turned from her magnifying glass, “don’t rush me, or I’ll use your favorite part to find out exactly how strong this iron fist is.” 

Daniel let out one of his booming laughs. “I always did appreciate your feistiness, Lena. But the boss wants the fist by this afternoon. Do not let her down.” He ended the sentence in a deadly serious tone, and Lena narrowed her eyes at him before returning to work and not looking up when she heard the lab doors slide open so Daniel could make his exit.

\--

Two hours later, the iron fist was completed. She turned over the beautiful piece of craftsmanship. It was a shiny chrome silver, with movable fingers that allowed the wearer to use it like it was their real hand. Any wires were safely enclosed in the metal, but those that were close to the surface of the machine made it look like real veins were flowing underneath. Lena’s eyes dragged over the fist, finally resting on the tips of each finger. Each were sharpened to a razor point and had dull, uncut Kryptonite crystals on top. Each finger had enough Kryptonite on top to severely wound Supergirl, and together? They could rip the heart out of that lying witch. 

Daniel had ordered every weapon she made to be outfitted with Kryptonite that she made, that way any Child of Liberty who had a shot could take it. 

Lena felt the rage wash over her like a wave. Supergirl, Kara, it didn’t matter anymore. Both had broken her heart, both had betrayed her, and both deserved to be punished. Lena would not be a fool any longer. Lena pressed the button that she knew would bring Daniel back.

Daniel walked into the lab moments later. “All finished?” 

Lena gave him a smile that could’ve started a war. “I never disappoint, Daniel.” She handed over the cold metal, and Daniel smiled widely. 

“No, Ms. Luthor, you certainly do not.” Daniel said as he inspected the fist closely and finally slid it onto his arm. “I must say, it fits like a glove, if you’ll excuse the pun. Let’s try it out, shall we?”

Lena stood as still as death as she watched as Daniel beckoned one of the ever present armed guards over and unceremoniously punched him with the fist directly in the chest, launching him clear across the giant laboratory and into some storage shelves. He didn’t get up. 

“Well, done, Ms. Luthor. Your next assignment,” he said, pulling a small round device out of his pants pocket and tossing it over to her. “It’s a cloaking device, and supposedly works against Supergirl’s x-ray vision. My guys got it to this point, but it keeps turning off and back on, and those idiots can’t seem to figure out why.” 

“Don’t worry, Mr. Atlas. I will take care of it.” Lena stared down at the device. It was obviously of intricate design, but in as small a form as humanly possible. 

“I know you will, Lena. Call me when you’re finished. Oh, and dinner will be brought to you soon as well, in case you were wondering.” 

But she wasn’t wondering about dinner, or anything at all, except for the small device in her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So? what do we think? Kara is a big worried baby that can't see the bigger picture, which is something I've always felt like is one of her biggest character flaws. But we love a problematic fave :) And Lena is finally using her smarts, even if it's against Kara/Supergirl. Relationships, right?
> 
> Also, if you're a fan of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, you'll recognize the Alstaireans from one of their comics. I took some liberties, obviously, but I thought their species was interesting. I don't read comics, but I spent some time researching the Alstaireans. Ky'rin and Hy'rin are meant to be sisters, or the plant version of sisters.


	5. Chapter 5

Lena POV

_The Day After Lena Makes the Iron Fist_

Lena had been working on the cloaking device for hours when Daniel returned, and Lena spared him a glance before turning back to her work.

“Our people have been reporting to us that a Catco journalist by the name of Kara Danvers has been attempting to contact you.” Daniel said, holding up a cellphone to her.

Lena turned away from her work on the cloaking devices to face him. The screen of the cellphone faced out, and the wallpaper, a picture of her and Kara smiling brightly in Lena’s office at L-Corp, stared back at her. Something deep inside her cried out for their missing friendship, and she instantly shoved the feeling away. Lena tried to focus on the fact that   
Daniel seemingly didn’t know that Kara was Supergirl instead.

“And?” Lena asked, keeping her tone neutral, already bored of his presence. 

“And,” Daniel began, wetting his lips, “We would like you to take care of it. Quietly. Or we’ll have to take care of it, and if a Catco reporter goes missing, it’ll cause people to talk.   
And you do not want people to talk.” 

Lena raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you threatening me, Daniel Atlas?” 

Daniel smirked. “Think of it more as consequences of the job. Anyways, take this,” he handed her the phone, “and get rid of that reporter.”

After Daniel left, Lena stared down at her cellphone. Kara had left seventy-three text messages and forty missed calls that all had voicemails. Even Alex, James, and Kelly had messaged her and called a few times, asking where she was and if she was okay. Lena could feel that nagging voice inside her again, straining at the fact that her friends cared for her. She wished she could use that iron fist on that voice. 

Lena sat for a while, debating on what to do. Obviously, even though Lena had tried to make it perfectly clear to Kara that she didn’t want to talk to her, Kara wasn’t going to back down without a fight. Typical. She had to message her, but what would she say? _Hey Kara, I’m busy working to destroy you at a cellular level and I’m rearming a bunch of racist humans?_ She doubted that would go over particularly well, even though she wanted her to suffer just as much as she did when she found out that Kara and Supergirl were the same person. Delayed gratification would make the end result so much better. That was why she was here, right? 

Lena felt the cold rage fill her veins at the reminded of what her former friend had done. _I thought I made it clear I didn’t want to talk._ she typed.

The reply was almost instant. 

_Lena OMG where have you been? I kept coming to your office but Jess has been throwing me out_

Lena smiled at the thought of her assistant unknowingly throwing Supergirl out of a building. Just yet another person Kara was lying to. She’d have to give Jess a raise when she returned. 

_Kara. Leave. Me. Alone._ She typed, wishing that a text could accurately convey just how much hatred and anger Lena was currently directing toward her. Maybe her Kryptonian senses could pick it up. Lena laughed to herself. If that was true, Kara would have been dead the moment she found out the truth. 

_Lena whats wrong? Youve been acting weird lately_

Lena wanted to fling her phone across the lab. How clear could she be? Before she could say something else, another text appeared. 

_Supergirl has been looking for you too she said something about a high tech cloaking device? She asked me to ask you when she couldnt find you_

Ever since getting her number, Lena had never seen Kara use punctuation other than at least four exclamation points when she was excited, the occasional comma, and question marks. Lena chalked it up to the fact that her famous reporter friend --enemy, she reminded herself again--always had perfect grammar and prose in her stories for Catco.

Lena's thoughts drifted back to their conversation and she stared at the cloaking device on her worktable. How could Supergirl know about it? She supposed Daniel did say they kept turning on and off and it would only make sense to know that if they had tested it, but she assumed in a lab or something. It wasn’t a weapon, so why would Supergirl particularly care about it? Lena realized suddenly that she had been referring to Kara and Supergirl as two different people again and mentally scolded herself. 

_Lena?_ Came another text, and she almost laughed. Kara was never afraid to double text, and sometimes she would even quadruple text. God, Kara really made it difficult to hate her, didn’t she? 

Lena didn’t know how long she had been sitting there deciding what to say and simultaneously arguing wiht herself about deciding whether Kara was a friend or an enemy. It was   
like there were two different people arguing constantly in her head, and it was honestly starting to make her temples throb. She needed to answer Kara, but the ache was growing and making everything seem foggy.

_I don’t know anything about a cloaking device._ Lena finally replied.

_I knew you didnt have anything to do with it!!!!_

Lena was about to throw her phone into a drawer and forget it when another text came through a minute or two later.

_Lena, I know you’re upset about something. I don’t know what it is, but you know I’m here for you right? I know things got out of hand at L-Corp, and I’m sorry I pushed you when you clearly weren’t ready to talk. We should get lunch and talk in person. My treat?_

Lena knew Kara was serious about this apology since she was typing with proper punctuation and was offering to pay for a billionaire’s lunch. She was debating her answer when Daniel walked back in. 

“Did you get rid of her?” He asked.

Lena rubbed her temple absentmindedly. “She wants to meet.” 

“Tell her no, then.” He said carelessly. He obviously didn’t know Kara Danvers.

“Kara Danvers is not someone who would accept no for an answer.” Lena said, and every syllable made her head pound harder and harder. 

Daniel sighed and pressed his fingers to his forehead in annoyance. “Alright, we’ll arrange something.” 

The lights in this lab were far too bright. Had they always been this bright? It was like dozens of suns all aimed right at her. She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched her head with her hands, as if were too heavy to be held up on its own. 

Daniel seemed to notice her pain then. “Ah, yes, the effects of the serum must be wearing off by now.” He glanced at his watch as if there were some countdown on it. “Don’t worry, we can take care of that right away.” 

Lena’s brain felt like it was melting. What did he mean, serum wearing off? She didn’t want any serum, especially if it made her feel like _this_. Is that what he even said? It sounded like English, but they didn’t sound like comprehensible words. God, she wanted this pain to stop, even if she had to pull her brain out of her ears. Something told her that was impossible, but she wasn’t listening to logic right now. 

She needed something, anything to make her head stop hurting. She tried the distraction methods an old nanny had taught her to use when she was upset at Lex or when she needed a scraped knee cleaned out with alcohol. She thought of happy things. She thought of girls night with Kara, Alex, and Nia, she thought of the time Kara brought her Big Belly Burger for a surprise lunch, she thought of being awarded her first scientific achievement award at L-Corp for her work in genetics. But the headache pounded away even more.

Seconds, minutes, maybe even hours passed before she heard the lab doors open and shut again. It sounded like they were hundreds of miles away. She was still sitting on her work chair, knees now drawn to her chest and head down in her hands. She heard murky footsteps and opened her eyes to see Italian leather shoes come to a stop in front of her. Kara would have laughed at the pretentious choice in shoes. A sharp pang went through her heart. She tried to remind herself that Kara betrayed her, lied to her, used her. God, everything was so _confusing_. She just wanted everything to _stop_.

“Lena, be a good dear and lift your head.” A man’s voice said with saccharine sweetness, and Lena slowly raised her head and blinked her eyes open to look at the source of the voice, a jolt of pain stabbing her behind the eyes at the light. 

The man, she thought his name was Daniel? Pushed her head back and jabbed a needle into her neck, causing her to cry out. Within minutes the headache was gone, and her thoughts had sharpened. 

“There we go.” Daniel Atlas said, handing the syringe to a lab guard who quickly left the room to dispose of it. 

“What the hell was that?” Lena snapped, coming fully back into her senses. 

“Just withdrawal symptoms, Lena. Don’t worry, they aren’t deadly, they just hurt like hell. Anyways, we got a meeting with your reporter friend planned. You tell her the details I give you, meet, and get her to back off.” 

Lena thought back to the text conversation. It seemed like it had happened a thousand years ago now, even though it had probably been about ten minutes at least. Lena felt a wave of anger at the stupid blonde reporter who couldn’t leave well enough alone. 

“Fine.” Lena said, picking up the phone. “Let’s get this over with.”   
\--

The next day, Lena was ushered into her familiar black town car. They had replaced her driver, and she hoped he was just fired, and not the other very possible option. She was to   
meet Kara at L-Corp and to pretend that she hadn’t gone anywhere at all and had been at work the past week. Her other goal was to get the girl to leave her alone for good. 

Lena hated that she even had to do this at all. She had work to do back at the lab, and this interruption was causing her to fall behind. She also didn’t want to see Kara at all, except on the other side of one of her Kryptonite weapons. 

The driver pulled up alongside the towering L-Corp building. Lena got out of the car when the driver came around to open it, not bothering to thank him. She ignored everyone that greeted her as she headed for the elevator, even if they gave her hurt or confused looks. She knew they were used to their boss giving them at least a friendly smile or nod as she walked in, but she wasn’t in the mood for niceties today. 

When the elevator doors slid open to reveal the floor that held her office, the first thing she was greeted with was Kara and Jess arguing, Jess blocking the doors to Lena’s office and Kara trying to persuade her to move. 

“I swear to you, I really am meeting with Ms. Luthor today!” Kara pleaded, but Jess just glared at her. 

“You’ve said that the past five times you’ve been here, Miss Danvers. And I’ve told you every time: no one is allowed in!” Jess then caught sight of Lena standing at the elevator and a nervous look came over her face. “Oh, Ms. Luthor, I was just about to call security I swear-“

“It’s fine, Jessica. Thank you. You can return to your desk, Miss Danvers and I are meeting today.” Lena was definitely giving the girl a raise when she returned to L-Corp.

Lena realized Kara was staring at her. The sight of the blonde liar made Lena want to scream. She wanted this meeting to be over already, and hopefully it would end with Kara giving up on her entirely so they would never have to do this again. 

She guided Kara into her office. True to her word, Jess hadn’t even let the cleaning lady into Lena’s office since she’d been gone. All of Lena’s files were open in the exact spots she left him. How long had she been out of the office? Jess had said Kara had been here five times, but knowing Kara’s persistence, that could’ve been five times in a single day.

“Lena, you don’t know how relieved I am to see you.” Kara breathed, moving in for a hug that Lena quickly dodged, causing a frown to overtake her face. Kara always did show everything she didn’t say in her face. 

“I told you I wanted to be left alone.” Lena said coldly, still standing in the middle of her office. Her eyes flicked over Kara, and she realized the girl had brought her Big Belly Burger. Her stomach growled quietly. 

“Lena, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for yelling at you the last time we talked in person. I shouldn’t have pushed you that hard after Lex. I brought a peace offering though!” Kara flashed her signature grin and held out the fast food bag.

Lena took the bag but didn’t return the smile. “Is that it? I have other things I need to do, Kara.”

Her cool dismissal of the apology immediately caused Kara to drop the grin, which gave Lena a small bit of satisfaction. “Oh yeah? Like what? Hiding from your friends? Ignoring their phone calls and texts for a week?” Kara took a deep breath, and Lena could tell she was trying to control her anger. She seemed to succeed, as the next sentence she spoke was softer. “We’re worried about you, Lena.” 

“I told you, I’m fine. I’m just busy on a new project.” 

“Last time you said that we found a WorldKiller in your lab downstairs. Please, Lena, what’s going on? Whatever it is, like I said yesterday, I’m here for you.” Kara said gently, stepping closer to Lena. 

Lena crossed her arms and fixed Kara with a cold stare. “There is nothing wrong, Kara. I keep telling you that!”

“Well I’m sorry if a major tech CEO has gone missing in the last week, and suddenly my friend in the same field has cut off all communication with her friends.” Kara snapped. 

Lena knew she must have meant Daniel Atlas. In the entire time Lena had been working, she hadn’t heard him talk about his company once. She assumed he did the same thing as her and had an assistant cover for him, but apparently only one of them had any real strategic gifts. Lena decided to stay quiet. 

“Lena, _please_. Tell me that you’ve been in this office for the last week, working on spreadsheets and running things like normal and I’ll back off.” 

“I’ve been in this office for the last week, working on spreadsheets.” Lena parroted back to Kara, who looked like she was on the verge of tears and totally unconvinced. But true to her word, Kara took a literal step back.

“Alright then. I guess I’ll leave you alone. Enjoy your lunch.” Kara’s tone reminded Lena of a puppy limping away after being kicked. 

She watched the blonde reporter leave the office, never once looking back. Her job was done.   
\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So since we got only Lena this chapter, the next chapter will either be all Kara or mostly Kara. I feel so bad for Kara in this chapter, she's just trying to help :'( And whats the deal with Lena and her headache? poor girl, I almost feel bad for her confusion. Also, Daniel is an idiot. I hope you enjoyed reading! I promise things will start to pick up soon. I just want to build up to it so the climax is justified.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the gap between updates, it's been crazy busy trying to get things in order for grad school applications plus work and I spent the night in the ER on Thursday... (all is well, nothing wrong). I hope you enjoy this chapter, its about 3500 words to make up for the gap :)

Kara POV

Kara left Lena’s office with what felt like a dagger in her heart. She desperately wanted to help her friend when she was obviously going through a rough time. She didn’t understand why Lena suddenly started hiding her feelings from her. Kara was always open and honest with Lena, except where Supergirl was involved, of course, and Lena was usually the same way. But if Lena wanted her to back off, Kara could do that. 

She didn’t remember the walk back to Catco, but she looked up and found herself standing at the steps of the media giant. Kara let out a long breath. It was Friday, and as bad as she wanted to just go home and eat ice cream and watch movies, she couldn’t just skip her whole workday because she was sad her friend had kicked her out. 

The rest of the day was a blur for Kara. Normal copying, emailing, filing. She tried to stay focused on the article she was trying to write, but her eyes kept wandering back to her phone lying face up next to her keyboard. It was 4 pm, and Lena usually texted her about dinner or game night before the workday ended at 5 so Kara knew her plans for the evening. Kara supposed she wouldn’t be getting a text this afternoon. This would be the second week in a row Lena hadn’t come to game night or dinner. Usually if Lena picked dinner rather than game night, it meant Lena had a hard day at work and needed to vent or just sit so Kara rescheduled family game night to Saturday. 

James must have noticed that something was off. “Kara,” he said from behind her suddenly.  
Kara jolted like she had been shocked by Livewire and snapped her head up from her phone. “Uh, yes James?” she asked, fiddling with her glasses. How she not heard him approach?

“Are you expecting a phone call?” He asked, a teasing smile on his face. 

“No...well, yes, a text actually, but I don’t think it’s going to be coming anytime soon.” Kara answered, not meeting his eyes. 

James’s smile left his face. “A date?” he asked, a more concerned look on his face.

Kara smiled nervously. “No, nothing like that. It’s just Lena,” she said, as if anything could ever be _just_ Lena, “she usually texts me about plans for tonight around this time. And she hasn’t yet.”

“She didn’t come last week either. Have you been to see her?” James asked. 

Kara groaned loudly, causing a few of the journalists around them to pop their heads up in confusion. Kara waited until they went back to working before she answered. “I was there at lunch. James, she lied to my face. She told me she had been in her office for the last week, working like normal. But I know that isn’t true. Something’s wrong, and she won’t tell me. She basically threw me out for a second time. We were so close, I don’t know what happened!” 

James thought for a moment before answering. “Alright, Kara. I’ll talk to her later this week. Something is definitely going on, and if she skips game night again Brainy and Nia will wipe the floor with the rest of us.” James tried to end it lightheartedly, but Kara could tell he was beginning to truly worry about Lena. 

Kara gave James a grateful smile. “Thank you, James. Maybe she’ll talk to you.” 

James patted her on the shoulder comfortingly. “Hopefully. Now get back to work, Danvers, or you’ll miss your deadlines.” 

When James was back in his office, Kara felt much more clear headed. That is, until, Alex called her about a Supergirl emergency. She rushed out of the office, ripping her outfit off to reveal her super suit underneath. 

“Alex, what is it?” Kara asked to her comm unit as she flew over the city.

“Kara, it’s not good.” Alex’s voice said through the comms. “You need to get to the DEO right away.” 

“Alex, where’s the emergency?” Kara asked confusedly. “You told me there was an emergency.” 

“That’s best explained in person.” Alex said, and Kara suddenly realized she sounded nervous. She pushed herself to fly faster.

Kara landed with a crack as hit the DEO floor. Making a face at the now large crack in the concrete, she looked up to find Alex and, surprisingly J’onn hurrying toward her with a worried look on her face. 

“Alex, what’s going on?” 

It was J’onn that answered her. “Supergirl, there’s been reports of Kryptonite weapons in the city.” 

Kara took a step back, panic filling her chest. “What? Where? How did they get Kryptonite? Don’t we have all of it?” She knew her words were coming too fast, too panicked, but she couldn’t help it. 

“We don’t know. We have reports that some former Children of Liberty are using them to round up aliens and keep them in line.” Alex said as matter-of-factly as she could without betraying her concern.

“Why would other aliens be worried about Kryptonite?” 

“The Kryptonite is attached to a weapon.” J’onn said, guiding them over to the main screens of the DEO. Brainy tapped a few keys, and a picture of an iron fist with Kryptonite tips was plastered across the screen. 

Kara gasped. It was probably silver upon its creation, but the metal glove was now stained a rusty red that Kara knew wasn’t designed by the creator. Metal “veins” ran along the sides of the fist, visible even in the grainy photo that was shown across the screen. As Kara stared at the weapon, her eyes kept being drawn to the tops of each finger. Where ten, razor sharp points sat embedded like fingernails. Kryptonite. Her throat felt like it was closing.

“The nails can be used to shred or rip, but the glove itself does have a massive amount of punching power.” Brainy chimed in, also staring at the picture. 

“Brainy, where did this come from?” Kara managed finally. 

“Ah, yes. Well, we don’t know.” Brainy said, tapping on the tablet. “We do have identification on the wielder of the fist. Ian Thompson, a manager at shopping center and a neighborhood leader of the Children of Liberty. Todays attack had at least seven former members of the Children, all from the same neighborhood as Thompson.” 

“So someone is giving these weapons to the Children of Liberty?” Alex asked, the unspoken threat practically dripping from her lips. 

“It seems so.” Brainy said in a careful voice. “But the Children of Liberty were outlawed and classified as a terrorist organization after Lex Luthor died.” 

Kara slid her gaze to the twelfth level intellect. “And robbing banks are illegal, yet people still do that.” She snapped. 

Brainy gave her a wounded look. “Supergirl, I know you are upset, but we will find the source of this Kryptonite weapon.” 

Alex butted in. “J’onn and I are going to have a chat with Ian Thompson.” 

“No!” Kara answered immediately. 

“Supergirl, I know you want to be at the front of every mission, but you see those Kryptonite tips. If Ian has some way to get Kryptonite, his house could be loaded with it. You would be dead before you even walked in the door.” Alex said firmly. “We argue about this every time. Just let us take care of this.” 

Kara huffed. She hated having other people do her work, espeically when it was dangerous and her sister was there. 

“Alex, you heard Brainy. That fist has incredible punching power. Even without Kryptonite, he could crush you.” 

“And that’s why she has me,” J’onn cut in. “We will be fine, Supergirl.” He nodded to Alex, and the pair turned away to ready for their mission elsewhere. Alex smiled encouragingly as she followed the former director away.

Kara stared at the picture of the iron fist in front of her and tried to think of who could have made this. She knew of only one person with access to Kryptonite on this planet other than the DEO. But she refused to believe that Lena would have anything to do with this horrible weapon. After all, these Children of Liberty groups were using them to hurt other aliens, not Supergirl. Even though Lena and Supergirl didn’t always see eye to eye, she doubted Lena would try to kill her, and she would never stand for killing innocents. 

“Brainy, keep me on the same frequency as Alex and J’onn. I want to hear everything they hear.” She snapped. 

“Of course, Supergirl,” Brainy responded. “I sense you are in great distress. You know we will find whoever did this?” 

Kara sighed. Brainy obviously thought the source of her frustration was the Kryptonite. There was no way he could know that she was scared for Lena. “I’m sorry Brainy. I’m just worried. It’s not right for me to take my frustration out on you.” 

Brainy nodded. “I understand, Supergirl. And I accept your apology. We will find who is creating this Kryptonite and put them behind bars where they belong.” 

Kara forced a smile onto her face as he turned back around to monitor J’onn and Alex’s positions. She didn’t know what she would do if Ian Thompson confirmed Lena was the source of this. And asking Lena directly wasn’t an option, since she already told Kara that she was “in her office” all week. Everything was so messed up and Kara didn’t know what to do to fix it. She wanted to find the source and save lives, but she also wanted to keep her best friend. 

It wasn’t long before Alex’s voice came over the comms. “Supergirl, Brainy, we made it to Ian’s house.”

“What do you see?” Kara asked immediately, instinctively taking a step forward. 

“Everything looks normal.” J’onn replied. “We’re about to go in.” 

“Brainy, can you find a way to keep their comm mics on permanently so we can hear what they hear?” Kara asked. 

“Give me a moment.” A few taps on the tablet, and suddenly Kara could hear a doorbell ringing in her right ear. 

“Good afternoon,” J’onn’s voice said. “My name is Agent Henshaw and this is Agent Danvers and we’re from the FBI. Are you Ian Thompson?” Kara could imagine the pair flashing their fake FBI badges. 

“What does the FBI want?” a man’s voice asked. 

“Sir, we just want to ask you a few questions.” Alex asked the man. 

“I’m not answering anything without a warrant.” The man sounded very angry, like the two agents just being on his doorstep was the most grievous offense known to man. 

“Mr. Thompson,” J’onn said, “it’s a matter of great importance. There was a terrorist attack downtown today.” 

“And that has nothing to do with me.” Ian responded angrily. “Get off my property.” A bang sounded over the microphone, followed by a loud sigh from Alex. 

“That went well.” She said. 

“Ian Thompson is definitely up to something.” J’onn responded. “Looks like we’ll have to get a warrant.” 

“Guys, something’s come up.” Brainy cut in suddenly. “Another attack downtown, near the waterfront.” 

“I got this.” Kara said and immediately headed for the exit. 

“Supergirl, what if they have more Kryptonite?” Alex asked. 

“You guys are too far away to get there first. I can’t sit here and let innocent people die because I’m scared of Kryptonite. Meet me there as soon as you can.” Kara shot out the  
window before anyone could make further argument. 

Once she hit the waterfront, she could immediately pinpoint the source of the attack. It was like they weren’t even trying to be low key about it. A group of people, all wearing Children of Liberty masks were striking randomly into the crowd with various weapons. Kara had never known any of the group to lash out against humans and aliens at random. 

Usually they didn’t hurt humans unless they fought back for the aliens. 

Kara swooped down and grabbed the wrist of one of the Children as it swung down with a crowbar towards a citizen. She pushed up hard and sent the man flying onto his back. By now the rest of the terrorists had realized she had joined the fun. 

“Supergirl,” one of them hissed. “Glad you could finally join us.” 

“What are you doing? The Children of Liberty were made a terrorist organization. You’re hurting people!” Kara yelled, dodging one of the terrorist’s frantic attacks. 

“You can’t outlaw humanity!” Another one of them yelled, leaping forward to swing at her with a nail spiked baseball bat, which Kara swiftly avoided. 

People were almost stampeding around them, desperate to get away. Kara knew she had to take care of this fast, because even if she managed to get the Children’s attention on her, people would hurt themselves trying to run away. Kara snatched the baseball bat out of the hands of one of the terrorists and snapped it in half and used the blunt end to land a heavy hit against his temple, knocking him out. Another ran at her, and she swung fiercely, her fist connecting solidly with his jaw. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. 

The remaining men froze in place, unsure of how to proceed. Until another stepped forward, seemingly out of nowhere, brandishing a glistening metal fist on his right hand. It was shiny silver, but even cleaned Kara recognized the deadly tips instantly. The iron fist from the previous attack. 

“Supergirl, I was so disappointed when you didn’t show up earlier today. No matter,” he continued menacingly taking steps toward her as he spoke, “it will still be I who brings the heart of Supergirl home to her.”

Kara tapped her ear to activate her comm, backing up slowly as the man walked forward. “Alex, we have a problem.” 

“Supergirl, we’re on our way as fast as we can fly. What’s wrong?” 

The man finally lunged, causing Supergirl to leap backwards. Her hips connected with something solid and immovable, and glancing down she saw that she had backed up against the fence that barred people from falling into the bay below. She was cornered. 

“The iron fist!” She shouted at her comm, ducking right to avoid the swing of the fist. “It’s here!” 

The man swung again, and this time Kara took the blow directly to her stomach since she was pressed against the fence. She could feel the proximity of the Kryptonite like one felt the heat of a fire before stepping directly into it. The blow made her drop to her knees, her strength leeching away. 

“Come on, Supergirl.” The man said gleefully. “I thought this would be more of a fight!” he struck again, swinging into her jaw. Kara felt onto her side and struggled to push herself up. Alex and J’onn needed to get here soon. 

“What do you want?” Kara managed to ask, spitting blood onto the pavement. 

“For Earth to be returned to humans, of course.” The man answered, a bored look on his face. “I thought we had made that clear.” 

“The Children of Liberty was named a terrorist group.” Kara said, slowly trying to build her strength back. “You were all disbanded.” 

“Yes, yes,” the man said, inspecting his metal fist as a child would a toy, “but we have friends in high places. And with recent additions, we have the technology to truly carry out our purpose.” The man threw the fist at her again, and Kara caught it right in the middle of her face. She heard a sickening crunch and pain blasted through her face and nose. Her hand flew up and she felt blood pouring out of her nose. 

Kara didn’t get a chance to ask anymore questions, as the terrorist continued to punch at her. He opened his palm, slicing the Kryptonite fingertips down her cheek. 

“Stop. Back away from Supergirl.” Kara heard Alex’s voice demand, and the punching finally stopped. Pain laced through her like a fire. Everything hurt. She tried to force herself to get up, but she found her knees had stopped responding to her commands. 

“You can’t stop me. I will finish my mission!” The Child of Liberty cried, raising his metal fist in the air. 

Kara watch J’onn step forward and exchange blows with the terrorist while Alex took out the remaining goons that had watch Supergirl get pummeled just moments before. Kara felt the pain and the Kryptonite eat away at her consciousness, until black was all she saw. 

\--

Kara woke up in the DEO lab, surrounded by yellow sunlamps. Her nose still hurt, but the pain was more of an uncomfortable pinch now. 

She started to sit up on the bed but was quickly pushed back down. “Whoa there, you aren’t fully healed yet.” Alex said. Kara looked up and grimaced at Alex’s face. The Children of Liberty had gotten in a few hits on the infamous Director Danvers. 

“Did you get them?” Kara asked, laying back down. The yellow light from the sun lamp washed over her like a splash of cool water on a hot day. 

“We did,” Alex said. "But, Kara you could have been killed!” 

Kara rolled her eyes. “Alex, I couldn’t just let them carry out their attack.” 

“You should have waited to engage until J’onn and I got there.” 

“You got the guys, didn’t you?” 

“And we almost lost you!” Alex yelled, worry written all over her face. 

“You’re right,” Kara said after a long pause. “I’m sorry, Alex.” 

Alex let out a long breath. “I’m not sorry that your nose probably still hurts.” She said, her mask of worry breaking into a smile. “Once we got you away from the Kryptonite your nose healed crooked. I had to rebreak it and reset it back here using our Kryptonite store. It was very cathartic.” 

Kara scrunched her nose and stuck her tongue out at her sister, wincing slightly at the little bit of pain that the action caused.

“Hey, I could have let you fly around with a crooked nose!” Alex said defensively, but she was still laughing. “And you would not have appreciated the way your nose looked before I fixed it.” 

“Fine, fine, I guess I’m grateful to your expert doctor skills.” Kara joked, but she knew Alex understood that she truly was grateful to her skills. “And I guess I kind of deserved it after rushing in there.” 

“Yeah, you kind of did.” Alex agreed. 

“Hey!” Kara said, fully offended. 

Suddenly the joking manner was replaced with a thick tension as Alex said, “Kara, you aren’t going to like what we found out from the Children of Liberty we caught.”  
Kara took a deep breath and nodded as Alex continued. “They told us who they’re getting their technology from.” Alex paused for a moment, as if the next words didn’t want to be spoken. “It’s Lena, Kara.” 

Kara felt like the world was slipping out from beneath her. All of the fights suddenly made sense. Her best friend, her closest confidant (besides Alex, of course), was arming a terrorist group. Arming a terrorist group to specifically fight against _her_. She couldn’t believe it. She refused to accept this. Even if Lena was mad at Supergirl, how could she stand for the killing of innocents? She was still friends with Kara Danvers, even if she had been upset the last few days, and she knew she presented Kara Danvers with the same ideals as Supergirl. Lena was _good_. Lena was her friend. She went to game nights and had dinner and went shopping with her. Lena took a lunch now when she had never stopped to eat before just because Kara wanted to eat with her and make sure she ate something. There was no way Lena would have done this. This was betraying Kara’s deepest values. This betrayed the deepest trust Kara had. 

“Kara, before you do something stupid—” Alex started, but Kara leapt out of the hospital bed, knocking into several metal tables and crushing them on impact. 

“Kara!” Alex called, following her as she stormed out of lab. 

Alex caught up to her and grabbed her wrist. Kara let herself be pulled to a stop. “Kara, listen to me. We are not equipped to handle this right now. We need to wait and see what their end game is. We don’t even know where Lena is right now.” 

Kara felt the words wash over her and knew they were true, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to fly right to L-Corp and shatter the big window behind Lena’s desk and demand some answers. 

“We need to find out more information before we try to take her down. She may not be working alone. And if she has enough Kryptonite to make that stupid fist, then she could have even more stored with her.” 

Kara felt the fight slowly drain from her. She was still angry, of course, but Alex was like an anchor to her storm. They would just get agents and potentially even themselves killed if they just ran in without a plan. She let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding. 

“You’re right. We need to think this through.” She said finally. “Where do we start?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Things are really coming to a head, we should have a big face off soon. Do you think Kara is going to drop Lena forever after this? Even if she does repent? 
> 
> If you want the next chapter even faster, consider leaving me a [tip!](https://ko-fi.com/axj0504)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I'm anxious about posting this chapter, I hope you guys like where this story is heading. Just a heads up, I probably won't be able to update until late next week due to work schedules and actually having to write the thing. I hope you can understand. Enjoy!

Lena POV

Lena paced around the lab. No projects had been delivered to her in the past day or so. She hadn’t seen anyone other than the silent lab assistants.

In the two days since she had completed the cloaking devices to perfection, she had spent the better part of yesterday curled into a ball, shaking and holding her head as she went through “withdrawals” as Daniel called them before. No one had come in and relieved her, and eventually throughout the night the pain had subsided. 

Which brought her to the pacing she was currently doing. Lena had no idea where she was. Her memories were foggy at best, missing at worst. She remembered working on various machines, but she didn’t know what or who they were for. The last clear memory she had was standing in front of three monitors, telling some old lady she would never work for her. 

The lab doors slid open suddenly, and Lena halted her pacing and Daniel Atlas walked back in. “Lena, good news!” He said, his tone making it sound like it was not good news at all. “You’re going back to L-Corp. You’ve been missing too long, and as we don’t have anything for you to work on right now, you will need to keep up appearances elsewhere.” 

Lena stayed completely still. She didn’t want to let on that whatever they were doing to her to wipe her mind had worn off. “Very well.” she responded, trying to keep her tone neutral as she didn’t know what part she was supposed to be playing. 

A bag was then wrapped around her head, blocking her vision. Lena let herself be led to what sounded like a parking garage, guessing on the noises around her. She was shoved roughly into a seat and buckled in. 

“We’ll be in contact, Ms. Luthor.” Daniel said to her. “Don’t do anything stupid while you’re out either, or we’ll know.” The unspoken threat was clear. 

Lena nodded, and heard the door shut beside her. She wondered idly if the reason she hadn’t seen Daniel for two days was because he was at his own company to “keep up appearances”. 

As she rode in the car, Lena’s thoughts turned to Kara. She wondered if Kara had realized something was wrong. Lena’s memory of their previous meeting was filled with holes, but she remembered feeling angry and annoyed. She was still angry, if she was being honest. But now that time had passed, Lena was feeling more levelheaded about the subject of Kara’s betrayal. Would she ever trust her that deeply again? Never. Could they still be friends? Maybe, if Kara apologized to her and explained the reason for the betrayal, and if that reason wasn’t the fact that she was a Luthor, Lena may find it in herself to come to terms with it. Lena still felt like it was a good idea to move back to Metropolis, at least for a little while. Put some distance between herself and this wretched city. 

Lena tried not to think about the past few weeks in the lab. She had been working on weapons, she knew that. But she had no idea what for or for whom she was making them. Everything seemed so far away, like she was looking at the memories through the wrong side of a pair of binoculars. Lena knew she needed to warn someone about the weapons, but how? She didn’t want to go to jail. She admitted she designed and built them, but she didn’t know what for. Lena was also afraid that if she admitted to building deadly weapons, people would only look at her as Lex’s successor rather than Lena Luthor, CEO of L-Corp. 

How had she let everything get so messed up? 

\--

Kara POV

Kara slammed her fists into a sparring dummy. Over and over, she hit the dummy until eventually the head of the foam person flew backwards and slid across the floor. She stopped and stared at it, then resumed hitting the still intact torso. 

Lena Luthor betrayed her. First the Kryptonite, and now this? She probably shouldn’t be surprised. Lena was a Luthor, after all. She should never have put her trust into someone that hates her family so much. She didn’t want to believe it, but she knew it was true. She had put a TruthSeeker on the man who claimed it herself. Lena had been building these weapons. To kill her. To kill innocent people. She kicked the torso of the dummy one last time, splitting it in half. 

Alex’s voice rang out from behind her. “We really should get some better practice targets for you.” She joked.

“I’m not in the mood, Alex.” Kara growled, staring at the mangled foam on the floor. “Have you found anything?” 

“No, but I came to check on you.” Alex said, walking closer into the room and putting her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “You’re worrying me.” 

“You should be worried about all the innocent people dying because of Lena Luthor!” Kara snapped. 

Alex’s hand tightened on her shoulder before she withdrew it completely. “Kara, I’ve been thinking about that. What if the guy was lying?” 

“I put the Truth Seeker on him myself, Alex.” 

“Yes, I was there. But I was thinking, what if the guy _believed_ it was true, but it wasn’t really? The Truth Seeker just checks to see if the person they are attached to is lying by comparing it to what’s in their brains. If someone told him that Lena was building their weapons for them and he was never told any different, then how would the Truth Seeker know?” 

Kara considered for a moment. “So...there’s a chance Lena _isn’t_ behind this?” she asked quietly, not willing to let herself hope. 

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Kara!” Alex said, more excited now. “Lena could just be a scapegoat because she’s a Luthor!”

Kara stayed quiet. Of course she wanted to believe Lena hadn’t done this, hadn’t caused the deaths of some innocent aliens and almost the death of Kara herself. But the level at which this technology was made--with that amount of Kryptonite-- screamed Luthor. 

She took a deep breath before answering, “I’ll try to talk to her. As Supergirl this time. James was supposed to go see her next week, but I’ll update him and tell him not to.” 

Alex nodded understanding that Kara didn’t want to let herself hope too much in case everything came crashing down. Kara knew Lena didn’t like Supergirl much these days, but it wouldn’t make sense for Kara to interrogate Lena about terrorist weapons and racist terrorist groups the way she planned on doing. It would be too obvious Kara knew too much about sensitive material. 

“I’ll clean up this mess and fly over to L-Corp to ask some questions.” Kara said, looking at the pieces of foam scattered around the room. There’s no way she would feel right leaving it for Janice, their sweet night janitor, to clean up. She headed to the janitors closet and grabbed a vacuum and quickly cleaned up the evidence of her tantrum. 

Once she was finished, Kara took to the skies. She had no idea how this was going to go. She hadn’t been to see Lena as Supergirl in a while. And if somehow the guy had the wrong information and Lena really was trying to kill her, this could be a trap of the worst kind. But it was a needed risk. One that, surprisingly, Alex had agreed to.

Kara could see into Lena’s office as she approached the big glass window and balcony. Lena’s chair was turned from the window, and Kara could see she was alone. Something pierced her heart as she saw all the boxes and furniture packed away for her move to Metropolis. 

She landed smoothly on the balcony and breezed into Lena’s office.

“Ms. Luthor,” she started, and was immediately silenced as Lena turned around to face her. 

This Lena didn’t look like the same Lena she had met with just three days ago. This Lena had looked like she hadn’t slept for days. Dark purple circles were stamped under her eyes. Her face was gaunt, a sickly green tone taking over her already pale face. Worry lines marred her usually smooth face.

“Lena?” Kara asked, more worried this time. 

“Supergirl, to what do I owe this unexpected visit?” Lena asked, her voice sounding normal and even despite looking sick. 

Kara cleared her throat and tried to school her face back into a professional mask. “I came to ask you a few questions about recent events.” She tried to keep her tone even. 

Lena gave her a lopsided smile. “Of course you have.” She said. “Ask away, Supergirl.” The way she said her name carried such menace that Kara almost left right then, accepting that as her answer. 

“What do you know of recent attacks on alien citizens of National City?” 

“Horrible attacks. I can’t believe they haven’t caught the guys responsible yet! Have you been able to find them?”

“That leads me to my second question. The terrorist attacks have been using synthetic Kryptonite in their weapons. You wouldn’t know how they got that, would you?” Kara crossed her arms, trying to steel herself against whatever answer came next. 

Lena had the nerve to looked shocked at the question, at least. “Are you accusing me of something?” 

“No, Ms. Luthor. But the DEO is supposed to have all of the Kryptonite on this planet, and you are the only one that knows how to make it. This is just standard procedure.” 

Lena’s face molded into cold indifference. “Maybe I did supply a bunch of terrorists with the only substance on earth that can kill you.” She said, and Kara opened her mouth to reply, but Lena cut her off. “Why? Tell me, Supergirl. What reason would I have to take revenge out on you?” Lena walked closer and closer to her as she spoke, ending up standing just a breath away from Kara. 

“I...” Kara trailed off, frozen at the proximity of her friend. She could feel Lena’s short breaths on her lips, and her pupils were dilated. 

“You can’t, can you?” Lena snapped, suddenly turning away from Kara and walking back to her desk. “That’s because I didn’t do anything.” 

Kara struggled to regain her composure. “Ms. Luthor, we have proof that you’ve been working with the Children of Liberty.” 

“What proof?” Lena asked, her voice careful.

“We caught one of the men who almost killed me. _Killed_ , Lena. We used a truthseeker on him. He told us you have been supplying them weapons with Kryptonite.” 

Lena froze. Kara wanted to hug her and shake her at the same time. Wanted to ask why she would do this. Want to beg her to stop, getting on her knees if she had to. But she stayed perfectly still. 

“It’s not what you think, Supergirl.” 

“Then what am I supposed to think?” Kara burst suddenly, like a dam holding back too much water. “Am I supposed to think that somehow a normal human man was able to outwit a TruthSeeker that worked on your own mother?” 

“Supergirl, we may not have always seen eye to eye. But you must know enough about me and my past to know that I wouldn’t just blindly work for a terrorist group.” 

Kara hesitated. “What are you saying?” 

“I’m asking you to trust me, Supergirl. I’m trying to figure some things out.” 

“I don’t know if I _can_ trust you, Lena.” Kara said quietly. “You told us you wouldn’t make any more Kryptonite.” 

“Please, Supergirl.” Lena actually sounded like she could be begging, and the idea of that made Kara get very, very uncomfortable. Something was not right. Lena Luthor didn’t beg. Ever. Not to Lex, not to Kara, and not to Supergirl.

Kara thought for a moment. She felt betrayed and hurt by Lena giving away the only thing that could hurt her to a terrorist group. But the way Lena looked, the way she was acting...Kara knew something was wrong. This was also the first time she had come here and wasn’t immediately met with hostility and anger. 

Reluctantly, Kara nodded. “Alright, Ms. Luthor. One more chance. Fix this, and we will talk about consequences later.” 

Lena let out a relieved breath. “Thank you, Supergirl.” 

Kara nodded and flew out the window before she could say anything else. She had a lot to think about.  
\--

Lena POV

She should have known Supergirl would visit her sooner or later. She was surprised she hadn’t been visited after Kara came in last time. She also should have known that the DEO was investigating the sudden surge of Kryptonite weapons in the market. 

Since returning to her office, Lena immediately caught up with the news. As she learned more about the terrorist attacks, the more she realized that she was, in part, responsible for the pain and terror they were unleashing. She had barely scrapped herself together before Supergirl flew onto her balcony. She believed Daniel about the consequences of telling anyone about where she had been recently. But he should know better than to let a Luthor go back to their lair. 

After Supergirl left, Lena lost no time in trying to find out everything she could about the people she had been working for. The influence and power they had...they really had reorganized the Children of Liberty. A nationwide terrorist organization. 

Whoever was in charge was smart, that was for sure. Lena searched and hacked for hours for a group bearing a name with the letter “L” and found almost nothing. A few mentions of Luthors, but that was to be expected in any terrorist plot. Lena knew Lex was dead—she had killed him herself—and Lillian matched ideals of the Children of Liberty, but she was far more tactful. And if Lillian wanted weapons, she certainly didn’t need to have Lena or Daniel Atlas do anything. Lex didn’t either, if she was being honest, since her brother was always far more removed from his terror plots. He preferred to swoop in after all the dirty work was done. 

Eventually Lena felt her eyelids start to droop. She sighed and slammed her laptop shut. She wasn’t going to find anything without a full name. Lena shut off the light and leaned back in her desk chair and stared around at her office. All the moving boxes were casting gloomy shadows in the low light, the sounds of the city murmuring below. 

She hadn’t realized she fell asleep until she jolted awake. The hairs on her neck were standing up and she suppressed a shudder. She was being watched. 

“Who ever you are, come out where I can see you.” She said, keeping her voice low and menacing. 

A broad figure stepped out of the early morning gloom, still keeping his face covered. 

“I was sent as a reminder, Ms. Luthor.” 

Lena rolled her eyes. “Spit it out, then.” 

The man let out a dark laugh and said “Leviathan is everywhere. Leviathan sees everything. This is your final warning, Lena Luthor.” 

And then he disappeared, as if he had never been there in the first place. 

Lena let out a shaky breath. She was lucky that she naturally slipped into her CEO voice when she was in her office, otherwise they might have known she wasn’t under the influence of whatever they had injected her with before. She didn’t even want to know how they knew she was researching them. In fact, if she was researching them and they knew, they should realize she wasn’t under the influence. What were they getting at? 

One good thing had come out of this. She had a name now: Leviathan. She had to find a way to get more information without them knowing what she was doing. _Tomorrow_ she decided as the heavy weight of exhaustion settled over her as the adrenaline of the encounter wore off. Tonight she would sleep on her office couch and in the morning she would find out who exactly Leviathan was and what they wanted. 

She was out as soon as her head touched the soft, expensive leather.  
\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kara has always struggled with blind wrath when she finds out about something she doesn't agree with. For proof, look at Mon-El. Mon-El didn't do exactly what she wanted, so she spent a lot of her time being angry. Lena in S3 had Kryptonite and Kara threw a fit and lost a friend. So that's why I wrote this chapter the way I did, with Kara just being an angry hypocrite. And also, poor Lena. I almost feel bad for torturing her. Do you really think that Daniel's dumb enough to not have dosed Lena before sending her back? [Ko-Fi](Ko-fi.com/axj0504)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I hope you enjoy this chapter! Things should be picking up more from here as we wrap things up. Thanks for your patience!

Lena had asked for time. She had asked for trust. Back at the DEO, when she told Alex what had happened, she had spent the next hour getting chewed out for caving. But as much as it pissed Alex and J’onn off, Kara didn’t regret her decision. She had the sneaking feeling something was happening behind the scenes at L-Corp, and even if no one else believed her, she could try to put her faith in Lena. Even if she had made weapons of mass destruction. Everything was so jumbled, so confused, Kara didn’t know what to think.

As she stood in the empty training room, she decided to make a list of what she knew and what she didn’t. 

One. Lena definitely built the iron fist. 

Two. Lena had a very, _very_ large supply of Kryptonite.

Three. Someone put cloaking devices on the market that even she couldn’t see through, which she supposed was how the guy at the waterfront magically appeared.  
Four. Lena had been gone for over a week from L-Corp, with no one knowing where she went. No matter how hard Jess tried to lie, Kara knew she was covering. 

Five. When she saw Lena again, she looked like she had been sick for days. 

Six. Lena begged her for her trust. 

It was number six that scared Kara the most. Number two was also terrifying, but when you put those two together, you got a very, very bad situation. A notoriously strong, no nonsense woman begging her for anything, plus a large amount of Kryptonite spelled that someone was forcing Lena to do something. 

Kara knew she shouldn’t care. She should just take Lena into custody for hurting civilians. But, as usual, she wanted to believe Lena was good so bad that she couldn’t do it. Even when all the signs pointed to evil, Kara went against the evidence and decided to trust Lena. 

Now to plan out her next move. If someone was pulling strings behind the scenes here, Kara needed to find out who it was and where they were hiding. She supposed that if Lena was being manipulated, this would be the best way to find out. She decided to find Alex and ask for her help. 

It wasn’t hard to find her sister. She was always either in the control room of the DEO or the one of the other sparring rooms. A quick survey using her x-ray vision told her Alex was sparring with Deimos and promptly kicking his butt. Kara hurried upstairs smiled a bit as she caught Alex throwing Deimos onto the ground. 

Deimos tapped out, and Alex released him, barely panting for breath. “Nice one,” Kara called out from the door. “What did Deimos do to bring on your wrath?” 

Alex snatched her sparring gloves off her hands as she stalked toward Kara. “I needed to hit something, he offered.” 

“I wanted to talk to you about Lena.”

Alex huffed but stayed quiet. 

“I know I was supposed to bring her here for more questioning. But, Alex, you didn’t see her. She looked like she hadn’t slept for days. She _begged_ me to trust her.”

“What exactly did she say?” Alex asked finally. 

“When I told her we used a Truth Seeker on the guy we caught, she told me that it wasn’t what I thought. And she said that even though we don’t always see eye to eye, that I must know enough about her to not blindly trust what I’m seeing. And then she asked me to trust her while she figured some things out.” 

Alex sighed, then narrowed her eyes. “I guess I understand why you didn’t bring her in.” 

Kara broke into a smile. “See, and you were mad at me!” She joked, punching Alex gently in the shoulder. 

“You aren’t out of the woods with that yet,” Alex warned, but Kara could tell she was trying not to smile. “We still need to figure out if your theory is true.” 

“I guess we should get started then, Director.” Kara said playfully as they headed back up to the control room.

\--

Lena POV

The good news was that she was a genius—one that had made L-Corp almost entirely self-sufficient in case of her absence. There were no meetings, of course, but their manufacturing plants and normal activities were able to resume as normal. 

The bad news was that she was totally trapped by Leviathan. She could see them now that she was aware of them, watching her every move. It was the old lady on the street. It was the young and in love couple at the table across from her at lunch. All of them staring at her. Watching her every move since the night Supergirl—Kara—had visited her and started researching them. An unfruitful bout of research, she might add. She had tried to look them up or ask around but nobody had ever heard of them. She had gotten mentions of a great beast in the Bible, or dragons, or some classified virus that the CDC was working on. But nothing about an organization of people. 

She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Anyone with the power these people had were too smart to have their information all over the internet. Lena had to plan her next moves carefully. She knew that eventually they would need her to work again and take her back to the secret lab. If only she knew where the lab was. 

A thought suddenly struck her. Lena walked calmly out of her office and into the elevator, trying to look normal in case any of Leviathan’s goons were watching her. She pressed the B4 button, which would take her to one of her secret labs in the basement. 

Once there, she stepped into the lab and looked around. No one was allowed down here except her. There weren’t even any cameras unless she put them up to track research like she did with Sam. But those had been deactivated and taken down. Down here, she was invisible. Lena let out a sigh. She hadn’t realized being watched every waking moment had made her so tense until she wasn’t anymore.

But there was work to do. Lena needed a way to let someone know she had been taken when they inevitably came back for her. A normal tracker would be too noticeable, to obvious if someone put their hand in the wrong spot. She obviously didn’t want a giant tracker placed under her skin either, since the band aid and subsequent lump under her skin would be obvious. Not to mention that it would hurt, but Lena Luthor was never one to shy away from pain. 

She sat in the empty lab to brainstorm. Finally she decided on a small, microscopic nanite tracker that she could ingest. It should be able to withstand stomach acid long enough for Supergirl to find her, and she could program it to stay inside her even if Leviathan made her throw it up. Lena tried not to think to hard about swallowing a piece of machinery. If it saved her life and stopped Leviathan, there wasn’t much she wouldn’t do. 

A few hours later, Lena stared at the nanite under a microscope. She didn’t need to make the nanite, she simply repurposed an old one that Lillian had left from her various alien destroying attempts. It simply took an hour of coding the nanite to become a tracking device, and another to make it recognize danger (i.e. in case of throwing up) and stay in place. All that was left to do was to tell Kara. If Leviathan was bugging her phone, she needed to be discreet. Nonsensical, even. Lena pondered for a moment before deciding on “552777” as the identifier of the device, and simply texting it to Kara followed by _333444663 633._.

Lena swallowed it without a second thought and headed back up to her office. Jess greeted her as she stepped out of the elevator. “Everything okay, Ms. Luthor?” 

“Never better, Jess. Why do you ask?” Lena said casually. 

“Well, there’s two guys waiting for you in your office. They said they had a meeting, and before I could stop them but they barged right in. I was about to call security.” 

Lena froze, fear spiking up her spine. She forced herself to smile. “Don’t worry, Jess. Everything is fine. You can go back to work now.” 

Jess gave her a suspicious look but didn’t say anything else and slowly returned to her desk. Lena took a shaky breath to calm her nerves. She had prepared for this. Leviathan was back, but now someone would be able to track her. She would get out of this. She straightened her shoulders and entered her office to meet her fate.

\--

Kara POV

Kara and Alex had started by interrogating the terrorists again, this time focusing on who was controlling them. But they were so low on the food chain that they knew almost nothing about who was in charge, just that they got their orders through the mail with no return address. So Kara tried to track the letters through the post office, but the post office had no idea what she was talking about. 

They decided to call it a night after Kara got back from the post office. Kara had argued, but Alex made the point that unless something changed, they weren’t going to find anything tonight. 

“I have a date with Kelly tonight, but tomorrow let’s do dinner?” Alex asked as they walked out of the DEO.

“Yeah, sounds great.” Kara said distantly, her mind on a million different things. 

“Hey, are you okay?” 

Kara shook her head as if to clear the thoughts. “Yeah, just worried about Lena is all.” She said, unable to keep the sadness out of her voice. 

Alex stopped walking and gave her a concerned but loving look. “Kara, you know we will find whoever is doing this.”

Kara nodded, but she didn’t feel as sure as Alex. They didn’t even have a name at this point. And who knows if Lena was in danger or not. And there was tons of Kryptonite just _missing_. Kara wanted to go see Lena again and ask for something, _anything_ to go off of. But she knew that would be too suspicious. 

“Kara, you need to relax. Worrying isn’t doing anyone any good.” Alex said after a few minutes, and Kara realized she had been lost in thought. 

“I can’t help it, Alex.” Kara said, frustrated at her own stress and lack of information. 

“Lena is a genius. She will figure this out probably before we do. She’s probably on it right now.” Alex replied soothingly. 

Kara huffed a sigh. “You’re right. Lena is capable. Everything is just so up and down right now. First she’s evil, then she’s not, then she’s being brainwashed. And that’s all in two days!” 

Alex gave her a sympathetic smile. “It’s definitely been a rollercoaster. But just like before, you were right about her not being evil. I’m sorry I keep doubting that. She’s proved time and time again that she is on our side.” 

“But this time I believed she was evil too, Alex.” 

“We all make mistakes, Kara. I just admitted to one. But what we do to make up for those mistakes speaks to our character and our true beliefs.” 

Kara couldn’t help but to wrap her arms around her sister. “You’re the best, you know that?” she mumbled into Alex’s shoulder.

“Of course I do.” Alex laughed and returned the hug. “But, Kara, you aren’t a bad person for assuming Lena had turned bad. The evidence was all there.” 

“But the evidence was all there last time too!” Kara countered, withdrawing from the hug. “And I didn’t believe it. I always believe in the good in people, but this time you had to tell me she was being used!”

“We can’t be right all the time, Kara. Stop beating yourself up over this. It’s not making anything better. The best thing we can do to make up for it is to find whoever is controlling Lena and stop them.” 

The sisters were quiet for a moment, both lost in thought. Kara was the one to break the silence. “You better go or you’ll be late for your date!” 

Alex grinned a big, goofy grin that made Kara feel warm inside. She was so happy her sister was happy. She deserved it more than anyone. Alex gave her quick “see you later!” before running out of the building. With her super hearing, Kara could hear Alex’s motorcycle start up and speed off. When the bike faded into a quiet whisper, Kara shook her head to focus on the present again. 

Just then, her phone buzzed. Upon clicking it open, she saw it was a text from...Lena?

_552777, 333444663 633._

Kara hadn’t had a text from Lena in weeks. And when she finally did text, it made no sense. But it had to mean something...but what?

Kara hurried back over to where Brainy was packing his bag to head home and if Kara had to guess, meet Nia somewhere along the way. She hated to cut into his personal life, but this was important. 

“Brainy, hey,” Kara greeted. “I need to ask for a quick favor.”

“Of course, Supergirl. What can I help you with?” He asked. 

“I just got this text.” She held up the phone to him so he could see it. “Any idea what it means?” 

Brainy glanced at the text, then folded his hands in front of him and closed his eyes. He was silent for several heartbeats, then opened his eyes. 

“There is a 97.68 per cent chance that it is a code of some kind.” Kara tried not to roll her eyes. She knew that it was a code.

“But what does it _mean_?” She asked again.

“There is a 70.42 per cent chance that it has something to do with a device, and an 85 per cent chance it is an identifier of some sort.” 

“Can you find out what it’s identifying?” 

Brainy closed his eyes for a moment. “There.” He said, reopening them. “I just set an algorithm to search for all devices that would be identified by six numbers.”

“Six? There’s more than six numbers here.”

“Yes,” he said as if she was the one who was missing the most obvious thing in the world, “however, the comma that was put in that specific spot implies that there is two parts of that message that are not related. One is identifying a device, the other is obviously a message to you.” 

“To me?” Kara asked, squinting at the numbers as if they would magically change into letters. She really hoped they would, as it would make things easier.

Brainy looked at her like one would look at a child who struggled with simple addition. “It’s quite simple, really. It says ‘find me’.” 

Kara nearly dropped her phone. “Find me?”

“It is just the numbers that one would press to get the corresponding letters on a keypad.” Brainy explained. “Really, I would expect Lena to present more of a challenge. Perhaps she was under a time constraint.”

“Which means someone was pressuring her.” Kara said worriedly. 

“It would seem so.” Brainy said, trailing off at the end and getting a blank look on his face for a moment before suddenly saying, “I have to go meet Nia Nal, but I will contact you the moment the algorithm locates the correct device.” 

Kara nodded. “Yes, yes sorry I know you were trying to go home. Thanks, Brainy.” 

Brainy nodded to her before picking up his bag and hurrying out the door, leaving Kara alone and frustrated in the middle of the DEO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you guys think? Will Kara find Lena in time? Will they rekindle their friendship? We have two very confused and conflicted protagonists. Poor babies. 
> 
> My kofi: ko-fi.com/axj0504


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updating! Writer's block has been a bitch lately. I hope you enjoy!!! Also, not to toot my own horn, but that trailer for S5 was kinda close to this fic! I'm excited as hell for the new season! What do y'all think?

Lena POV

She knew she was being taken back to whatever secret lab Leviathan had put her in before. She just hoped that Kara trusted her enough to track her. And she hoped that the tracker even worked. But there was no time for tears and anxiety now. She had to focus on finding ways to stop Leviathan. 

The two men led her out of L-Corp, obviously out of place in their stark black suits, sunglasses indoors, and stoic expressions but her employees trusted her enough to not say a word as she walked out of the building. Once they were to a black SUV, a bag was swiftly placed over her head. They rode in silence. The bag was thick, and before long she was sweating and uncomfortable. 

She lost track of how long they had been driving by the time the car stopped. She could hear one of the car doors open and suddenly felt a strong yank on her arm and allowed herself to be pulled out of the car. 

“Welcome back, Ms. Luthor.” A familiar male voice said. Daniel. 

Lena still had the bag over her head as someone pushed her into a walk, keeping a tight grip on her arm. 

“What will I be working on this time?” She asked as calmly as she could even as her heart was beating so fast she was sure they could hear it. 

“Oh, we have big plans for you this time.” Daniel said. “You’ll see when we get to the lab.”

They fell silent again as they walked, the incessant click of Lena’s heels against the floor the only noise. Suddenly the bag was snatched off her head and she was blinking against  
the blinding florescent light of the familiar lab. 

“They don’t want us to waste time. The project is laid out for you on the work bench. You only have part of the plans, my team has the rest,” Daniel explained. “Before you get started, we have to make sure your loyalties still lie with us.” 

Lena didn’t have to guess at what was coming next. Daniel had allowed her to go out without the mind control serum, mistake or intentional, she wasn’t sure, but she figured that it wouldn’t be allowed to happen again. 

A sharp pinch followed by an odd feeling of heat being injected into her neck made her knees nearly collapse. Two guards grabbed her elbows as she went down, keeping her  
upright with a jolt. A calm rage washed over her, focusing her thoughts on the anger and betrayal that she had set aside to fight Leviathan. All of those emotions came rushing  
forward in a torrent stronger than Niagara Falls. 

“Now get to work, Luthor.”  
\--

Kara POV

Kara sat in the DEO headquarters, agonizing over the cryptic text Lena had sent and waiting on Brainy to tell her that the algorithm had located a device that would explain everything. Kara hadn’t gone home that night, and instead used the wee hours of the morning to search different devices, try to decode anything related to the numbers, and taking breaks to hit things in the training room when she got too frustrated. 

She didn’t even realize she had dozed off until a firm hand was on her shoulder and shaking her gently. She had pulled up a chair to the console in the middle of the room and had been working on—more like staring at the numbers and hoping—on the tablet. 

The shaking jolted her out of her slumber. Kara leapt up, her chair rolling backwards and hitting the semi-circle of computers. “Did it find it?” she asked desperately, everything hazy according to her still asleep brain.

“Did what find what?” Alex’s voice asked as Kara rubbed the sleep from her eyes and Alex’s face came into view.

“The device that we’re supposed to be tracking.” Kara huffed and stared at the tablet and the constant stream of numbers that ran across it. 

“What device, Kara?” 

Kara realized that Alex had left for her date with Kelly before Lena’s text had come in and Kara had been so preoccupied with hoping they would find Lena that she hadn’t texted Alex about it. 

“After you left,” Kara groaned, scrubbing her face with her hands to try to wake up, “Lena texted. She sent a bunch of numbers that Brainy said was a message and a tracking number. But we can’t seem to find out what sort of device uses a six digit tracking number.” 

“Why didn’t you text me right away?” Alex asked in an annoyed tone—too annoyed for Kara’s current sleep deprived state. 

“Because you were on a date with Kelly and I didn’t want to bother you, plus I was busy trying to figure out what it all meant!” Kara snapped, holding up her head with one hand propped on her other arm.

Alex glared at her, clearly not intimidated in the least by Kara’s mood. “I could’ve helped, Kara. Kelly would have understood.” 

“But it wouldn’t be fair to you to ruin your night.” 

The glare on Alex’s face morphed into one of pity. “Did you sleep at all last night?” She asked in a gentler tone. 

Kara nodded, her eyelids heavy as she struggled to keep them up. 

“More than an hour?” Alex pressed.

Kara sighed, looking up at her sister. “I couldn’t sleep, Alex. What if Lena was taken and we don’t know it? She could be out there right now, being used by the Children of Liberty or whoever else.”

Alex thought for a moment. “Why don’t you go home and sleep, I’ll keep an eye on things here. If Lena’s device is found, you’ll be the first to know.” Kara started to argue, but 

Alex cut her off. “Say we do find her today. If you’re half asleep, how are you going to rescue her?” 

“You didn’t know that was what I was going to say.” Kara pouted.

“That’s exactly what you were going to say. I’m your sister. I know everything. Go home, Kara.”

She sighed, part out of exhaustion and part because she knew Alex was right. She wouldn’t do any good to Lena if she was half asleep. She felt her shoulders sag as the fight drained out of her. 

“Call me the minute you find something.” Kara threatened with as much force as she could muster.

“I will.” Alex promised. 

Kara headed toward the open balcony to fly home. Every step felt like she had blocks of Kryptonite around her ankles, holding her down to the earth. Even the flight home was devoid of the joy that usually swooped through her chest. When Kara finally made it to her apartment, she collapsed across her bed and fell asleep, still in her super suit.

_Kara was standing in an empty room. The white lights shone down harshly, creating long gloomy shadows behind Kara. She turned in a circle slowly, activating her x-ray vision—only for a blinding light to block her. She blinked hard and flinched back as if she had been hit.  
When she opened her eyes again, Lena was standing in front of her. The harsh light cast weird shadows onto her already pale face, accentuating her jawline and nose, but also making dark circles stand out under her eyes. Lena’s usually mossy green eyes were dark, her pupils blown wide. _

_“Lena?” Kara asked cautiously._

_“Kara,” Lena said in a low voice, “I’ve been waiting for you.” Lena leaned in close enough that Kara could feel her breath on her lips and she instinctively closed her eyes and leaned in._

_But their lips never touched. A whoosh of air had Kara opening her eyes to see Lena being ripped away from her. Her arms were flailing wildly, her hair whipping as she slid away through the empty warehouse as though some invisible force had wrapped itself around Lena and pulled._

_“Kara!” Lena screamed, and Kara was shooting through the air in an instant. But the empty warehouse had changed in a blink, as dreamscapes were prone to do. The warehouse had changed into a maze. In the distance, Kara could hear Lena screaming her name, begging her to help her. Kara leapt up, trying to fly above the maze, but she didn’t take flight as she was expecting to do. Her feet hit the ground with a thud and panic rose in her chest._

__

_“I’m coming, Lena!” she yelled, and took off running through the maze. Panting and sweating, she ran and ran through the maze, desperately following the sound of Lena’s voice that only seemed to get further and further away the closer Kara got._

Kara awoke with a start. For a moment she was still stuck in the maze, heart racing and chest heaving. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head, slowly coming back to reality. She was exhausted and confused from her dream and impossibly more tired than she had been before falling asleep.

She realized that something was buzzing in her room. Fumbling around on her nightstand, she snatched her phone and held it up to her ear. 

“Kara, we found something. How soon can you be here?” 

Kara was already opening her apartment window. “I’m on my way.”  
\--

Lena POV

“It’s finished.” Lena said as Daniel walked into the lab.

“Good, my team is putting the final touches on their part of the project. It’s time for us to make the decisions on earth, not aliens.” Daniel said the word “aliens” like it was a poisonous fruit that he had just bitten into and realized it would kill him.

“What are we supposed to do next?” Lena asked, ignoring his outburst about aliens. There was only one alien she cared about destroying. 

“The drop point will be in Metropolis.” Daniel said. “And seeing as how you’ve been _so_ helpful to the cause, the people in charge have decided you deserve a front row seat!” 

Lena stared at him. His tone was that of a sarcastic announcer, and Lena didn’t trust it. “What does that mean, exactly?” 

“It means that you’ll be in Metropolis when the device is launched. L-Corp still has a branch over there, I understand?” Daniel said it like a question, but it obviously wasn’t. 

“So what, I do all this work and then I just get to watch? What about my revenge? My part of the deal?”

Daniel chuckled. “Lena, Lena, Lena. When we drop this device into a city, who exactly do you think will be first in line to stop you?”

“Metropolis is Superman’s city.” 

“This device is big enough to force Superman to call his cousin for aid.” Daniel said, his tone growing more annoyed. “Two birds with one stone.” 

“I’ll need some sort of protection.” Lena said. 

“We’ll leave that up to you. I’m sure you can come up with something before tomorrow.” With that, Daniel turned and exited the lab, leaving Lena alone to brainstorm ways to fight a Kryptonian.

With limited time and limited Kryptonite resources after their stores had been depleted by the weapons she and Daniel’s team had been making, Lena managed to shave a few shards of Kryptonite into the size and shape of rudimentary bullets. She knew there was a gun in her office back in Metropolis left over from when Lex was there. She hoped the caliber was big enough to accommodate the Kryptonite bullets she had made, but knowing Lex, he had the most efficient caliber available to him so that’s the size she aimed for with her bullets.

As she worked, she imagined actually getting to use these on Superman and Supergirl. The squeeze of the trigger, the explosion and subsequent smell of gunpowder. The soft _thunk_ of the bullet going through flesh. She could picture the red of Kara’s blood leaking out onto her suit, a dark contrast to the ruby of her house sigil. Then Superman would be there, flying to the L-Corp building when he heard the firing of the gun. Bent over his dead cousin’s body, Lena would take her second shot, hitting him in the back right between the shoulder blades. She could picture the way he would stiffen and fall, his blood pooling behind him as he lay on her balcony. She didn’t necessarily _want_ to kill Superman, but there was no way he would allow her to be free if he knew that she killed Supergirl. 

After completing the gun, some guards brought her some food and a cot. She ate and fell asleep quickly, nervous and excited energy bubbling through her like adrenaline. 

Tomorrow, she would complete her revenge. 

Lena’s sleep was deep and dreamless. She woke up some time later to guards prodding her arm with their batons. Sleepily she sat up, and a needle was jabbed into her neck.

“You know, you could warn me first.” She snapped, rubbing the spot on her neck with her hand. 

The guard holding the now empty syringe just glared at her and walked away to dispose of the biohazard. Lena was pulled to her feet by the second guard rather roughly, and she started to tell him exactly how she felt about being manhandled when Daniel walked through the lab doors. 

“Today’s the day, Ms. Luthor!” He said, his excited tone not matching his expression.

Lena gave him an even look. “When do I leave for Metropolis? And where will you be during all of this?” 

“You just woke up and you’re already talking business. I admire you for that.” Daniel said, but Lena didn’t smile at his joke. He grimaced, then continued. “I’ll be in Metropolis as well, but it’s safer if you don’t know the whole plan.”

“But you get to know the whole plan?”

“No offense, Ms. Luthor, but I’ve been working here a lot longer than you. They trust me upstairs.” Daniel said haughtily. “You broke their trust the first time you stepped out of this lab.” 

Lena rolled her eyes at him. “Forgive me for wanting to know exactly who I’m working for.” She said sarcastically. 

Daniel sighed. “Let’s go, gentlemen.” He said to the guards behind Lena. “Time’s wasting, and we have a city to take over!” He spun on his heel and left the lab, and Lena could hear him mumbling something to someone she couldn’t see outside of the lab. 

The guards gave her a moment to freshen up in the bathroom as well as collect the Kryptonite gun she had made the previous day. Lena took a deep breath as the guards placed the black bag over her head. Today was the day. Today she would get her revenge on the person who hurt her the most. Everything was coming together. She was walked to a car, and they drove in silence for what felt like hours. 

The black bag was removed when the car finally stopped. They were on a flight line, and in front of her was a sleek white jet that Lena knew was meant to take her to Metropolis. 

She _hated_ flying. Just the thought of stepping on a plane that was flown by a human pilot made her hands sweat. As she boarded, Lena clasped her hands together tightly to hide the shakiness that threatened to betray her fear. She steeled herself against the rising panic in her chest. She would not show weakness to these people. The flight was silent, thankfully, as Lena wasn’t sure she could keep her voice even enough to hold conversation with any of the guards that filled the plane.

Before taking off, they had explained that she would be at L-Corp without them, but she would be perfectly safe. There was no way Supergirl or Superman would bother with her once their plan was in motion. Lena wasn’t so sure about that, but she didn’t argue. She didn’t want an audience when she killed Supergirl. It was a moment she wanted to savor alone. 

\--

Kara POV

Kara was at the DEO before she could even fully process what Alex meant by “found something”. Sleep still clung to her eyes as she walked to meet Alex at the control center in the middle of headquarters. 

“What did you find?” Kara asked by way of greeting her sister.

“It turns out that the device we were tracking was a repurposed nanite.” Alex said, and before she could continue, Brainy cut in.

“Actually, there is a 93 percent chance that the device is a nanite.” Brainy said. “Of the six devices that the algorithm pinpointed as using a six digit tracker, nanite was the most relevant to our investigation.” 

“What were the other five?” Kara asked.

“Three of the devices were theoretical and will not be invented until the twenty-second century.” Brainy explained. “So as you know, I cannot share with you what these are. But the other three were a drone prototype built by AtlasTech that we tracked but led to the AtlasTech building, a popular tablet model, and the nanite.”

“Is it just this specific nanite? Or a swarm?” 

“Well, we first thought it was a swarm that would be used in the next terrorist attack. But when Brainy put in the specific six digits, it let us to a single nanite.” Alex explained. 

“So where is the nanite now?” 

“Currently en route to Metropolis as we speak.” Alex answered quickly. “But, Kara, we don’t know if it’s Lena or not. We just know that the nanite that Lena sent us is going to Metropolis. It could be a trap.” 

Reluctantly, Kara nodded. As much as she wanted to jump in and save her friend, Alex was right. Lena was in danger, but Kara wasn’t help to her if she was trapped by the enemy. 

“Let’s see what we can figure out before we go in. I’m going to call Clark and tell him what’s happening. Metropolis is his home, and he will help us stop whoever is coming to take it.” 

They spent most of the day hacking into satellites, cameras, and Clark even tried to fly out to see how the nanite was travelling. He reported a private jet on a trajectory to Metropolis but said he couldn’t see inside since the walls were lined with lead. To Kara, that almost screamed that Lena was on that plane and, more importantly, in danger. 

Night was falling by the time that they decided that their best course of action was for Kara to fly to Metropolis and meet Clark. The DEO strike team had been sent ahead on a plane a couple of hours earlier to act as back up to MPD. If this ended up being just Lena flying to Metropolis for business and not a terrorist attack, then everyone would simply return home like nothing happened. But if it was some sort of attack, the DEO would not be unprepared. 

Alex met Kara on the balcony of the DEO. “Are you ready for this?” she asked

Kara sighed and looked out over the darkening city. Lights were beginning to turn on, and from this distance, if she didn’t use her exceptional vision, they almost looked like little stars. “I don’t know, Alex. I’m trying so hard to give Lena the trust she asked for, but I have no idea what she’s playing at.”

“She sent us this tracker, didn’t she?” 

“But what are we tracking, Alex? Her? The terrorists?” Kara asked, growing more exasperated with every word. 

“You trust Lena, don’t you?”

“With my life!”

“You two are closer than any friends I’ve ever seen. Trust that she has your back, Kara. Even when she did things you didn’t like, you still had her back when no one else did. Don’t let the uncertainty of this mission make you forget that you two are always on the same side. You know how each other thinks, what each other wants, needs, feels. Use that to find her and stop whoever is trying to hurt her.” 

Kara couldn’t stop herself from wrapping her sister into a crushing bear hug. “Thanks, Alex.” She mumbled into her shoulder. 

“Anytime, Supergirl.” Alex said, and Kara could practically hear the smile in her tone. “Now go get the girl.” 

Kara released her and stepped back. She gave her sister a determined nod, then shot off into the twilight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting intense! Will Lena use that Kryptonite gun on Kara? Can they make up their friendship? Can Kara talk Lena down from that mind control juice? And what about that dream Kara had? Find out in the next two chapters!  
> My ko-fi:  
> https://ko-fi.com/axj0504


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter!! I really needed to finish this up with school starting and a million other WIPs bumping around in my head, plus I got a new computer. Sorry if it's rushed in any way. It took me two weeks to write. Thanks for reading!

Kara was at the DEO before she could even fully process what Alex meant by “found something”. Sleep still clung to her eyes as she walked to meet Alex at the control center in the middle of headquarters. 

“What did you find?” Kara asked by way of greeting her sister.

“It turns out that the device we were tracking was a repurposed nanite.” Alex said, and before she could continue, Brainy cut in.

“Actually, there is a 93 percent chance that the device is a nanite.” Brainy said. “Of the six devices that the algorithm pinpointed as using a six digit tracker, nanite was the most relevant to our investigation.” 

“What were the other five?” Kara asked.

“Three of the devices were theoretical and will not be invented until the twenty-second century.” Brainy explained. “So as you know, I cannot share with you what these are. But the other three were a drone prototype built by AtlasTech, a popular tablet model, and the nanite.”

“Is it just this specific nanite? Or a swarm?” 

“Well, we first thought it was a swarm that would be used in the next terrorist attack. But when Brainy put in the specific six digits, it let us to a single nanite.” Alex explained. 

“So where is the nanite now?” 

“Currently en route to Metropolis as we speak.” Alex answered quickly. “But, Kara, we don’t know if it’s Lena or not. We just know that the nanite that Lena sent us is going to Metropolis. It could be a trap.” 

Reluctantly, Kara nodded. As much as she wanted to jump in and save her friend, Alex was right. Lena was in danger, but Kara wasn’t help to her if she was trapped by the enemy. 

“Let’s see what we can figure out before we go in. I’m going to call Clark and tell him what’s happening. Metropolis is his home, and he will help us stop whoever is coming to take it.” 

They spent most of the day hacking into satellites, cameras, and Clark even tried to fly out to see how the nanite was travelling. He reported a private jet on a trajectory to Metropolis but said he couldn’t see inside since the walls were lined with lead. To Kara, that almost screamed that Lena was on that plane and, more importantly, in danger.  
Night was falling by the time that they decided that their best course of action was for Kara to fly to Metropolis and meet Clark. The DEO strike team had been sent ahead on a plane a couple of hours earlier to act as back up to MPD. If this ended up being just Lena flying to Metropolis for business and not a terrorist attack, then everyone would simply return home like nothing happened. But if it was some sort of attack, the DEO would not be unprepared. 

Alex met Kara on the balcony of the DEO. “Are you ready for this?” she asked

Kara sighed and looked out over the darkening city. Lights were beginning to turn on, and from this distance, if she didn’t use her exceptional vision, they almost looked like little stars. “I don’t know, Alex. I’m trying so hard to give Lena the trust she asked for, but I have no idea what she’s playing at.”

“She sent us this tracker, didn’t she?” 

“But what are we tracking, Alex? Her? The terrorists?” Kara asked, growing more exasperated with every word. 

“You trust Lena, don’t you?”

“With my life!”

“You two are closer than any friends I’ve ever seen. Trust that she has your back, Kara. Even when she did things you didn’t like, you still had her back when no one else did. Don’t let the uncertainty of this mission make you forget that you two are always on the same side. You know how each other thinks, what each other wants, needs, feels. Use that to find her and stop whoever is trying to hurt her.” 

Kara couldn’t stop herself from wrapping her sister into a crushing hug. “Thanks, Alex.” She mumbled into her shoulder.

“Anytime, Supergirl.” Alex said, and Kara could practically hear the smile in her tone. “Now go get the girl.” 

Kara released her and stepped back. She gave her sister a determined nod, then shot off into the twilight. The night air was cool as it whipped against Kara’s cheeks, the slight chill keeping her alert. She worried about what Lena was doing in Metropolis. If it ended up being some nefarious purpose, would Kara really be able to fight Lena? Her best friend?  
The person she loved more than anyone else on this planet except Alex? 

She let out an audible gasp as her reasoning caught up with her train of thought. Did she love Lena? In...more than a friend way?  
“Supergirl? What’s wrong?” Alex’s voice asked through her earpiece. 

“Nothing, nothing. Sorry.” Kara replied sheepishly. “Just, um, saw a really pretty...mountain.”

“Well you’re not flying to Metropolis for sightseeing.” Alex said, her tone slightly annoyed. “Head in the game, Supergirl.” 

“Sorry, yeah, head in the game.” She said, happy that Alex wasn’t here to see her blush. 

Alex was right. Now was not the exactly the best time to decide whether or not she was in love with her best friend, especially since there was a chance said best friend was currently participating in a terror plot. But the thought kept nagging at her. Something about the way that it had just casually crossed her mind and her initial acceptance of it pointed to the truth of it. But deciding that one was in love with her best friend was not a casual thought. Besides, up until now Kara had only dated men. 

Too soon, Kara noticed the landscape changing from untamed forest to bustling suburbs. In the distance, highlighted by the hazy glow of light pollution stood the bustling city of Metropolis. She pushed the confusing mess of thoughts out of her mind as she neared the city. Right now she needed to focus on saving Lena—and stopping the Children of Liberty. 

“I made it.” She said, coming to a stop just inside the the maze of buildings and pressing a finger to her earpiece. “Where is she?”

“The tracker,” Alex said, putting a little bit too much emphasis on the word _tracker_ , “is currently en route to the L-Corp building. Superman is on standby in Metro Park waiting for your arrival.” 

“I’m going to meet Lena at L-Corp.” Kara was already starting to take off again when J’onn’s voice in her ear stopped her.

“Supergirl, you need to rendezvous with Superman. We don’t know what they’re planning, and having you go in too soon could cause whatever the Children of Liberty are planning to get set off before we have a chance to stop it.” 

Kara sighed. She knew J’onn was right, even if she hated it. Lena gave them the ability to track her for a reason, and it felt like betraying her to not go to her immediately. “Fine. She said finally into the microphone. “I’m on my way to Metro Park.”

Clark met her as soon as she touched down inside the park. Even in the dark, Metro Park was still beautiful. She had landed next to a giant stone fountain, the water clear and flowing and the bottom was shimmering with copper and silver coins. The park was deserted except for the two of them. 

“Kara.” Clark greeted with a tight nod and a grim look on his face. “It’s good to see you, although I wish it was under better circumstances.” 

“Me, too.” Kara replied. “What’s been going on?” 

“It’s been quiet. I was able to see the plane that Ms. Luthor was on land but I had to fly out before I could see where they were headed. The whole place was crawling with security.”

“Lena’s headed to the L-Corp building, but we don’t know what they’re playing at.” Kara said. 

“I’m surprised you aren’t there already.” Clark said in a lighter, almost teasing tone. 

“Not for lack of trying.” Kara replied in a slightly annoyed tone. 

The pair fell silent for a moment, thinking. Kara knew she would be flying into a trap when she eventually did go to the L-Corp building. But she had to at least try to help Lena. 

She found herself thinking about the realization she had on the flight here.

It was Clark who spoke first, dragging Kara out of her thoughts. “I’ll patrol the main streets for any sign of trouble. You should be careful, Kara. We don’t know what they’re planning. Don’t go flying right into the L-Corp building, it could be a trap.” 

Kara couldn’t help the way her eyebrows furrowed together. “I was not going to do that.” She said, hating the defensive tone that came out.

Clark gave her a knowing look. “Sure you weren’t.” he said skeptically. “Be careful, Kara.” Clark shot into the air, Kara barely managing to croak out a “you, too” before he was out of sight. 

“Alex, I’m on my way to L-Corp.” Kara said into her earpiece. 

“Be careful, Supergirl.” Alex replied. “Our agents are standing by along with MPD.” 

Kara took off towards the L-Corp building. She was about halfway there when a loud _boom_ sounded from somewhere to her right. Looking around wildly, she tried to pinpoint the exact location of the explosion. 

“Alex, what’s happening?” she asked breathlessly. 

“There was an explosion on fifth avenue. Our operatives are already on the scene with Superman. Keep going to L-Corp.” 

“But Alex...” Kara tried, ready to turn towards the growing cloud of smoke in the opposite direction of L-Corp.

“Supergirl, we got this. You need to get to Lena and put an end to this before it gets worse.” Alex said using her Director Voice, which Kara knew meant she was serious. She prayed that whatever building had blown up was unoccupied at this time of night. 

Reluctantly Kara continued toward L-Corp, arriving at the base of the building just as several more loud explosions rocked the city, this time followed by dozens of audible screams even without her super hearing. People took to the streets, running wildly up and down the sidewalks. At first, Kara didn’t understand why people would be running here, since there was no visible threat. It wasn’t until she leapt into the sky that she realized masked Children of Liberty were chasing people—humans and aliens both—out of their apartment complexes and businesses brandishing weapons of all caliber. Kara spotted one group and barely had time to zip down and wrench a person from three of Children of Liberty that were relentlessly hitting and kicking him. She easily dodged their shoddy baseball bats and crowbars and shoved them away, one hitting a nearby lamp post and the other falling and sliding over the sidewalk into a storefront. The last charged at her and swung wide with his fist, allowing her to easily side step him and allow himself to crash into a newspaper stand. 

A distant buzz at the back of her mind told her that helicopters were flying in. “Alex,” Kara tried, pressing a firm finger to her ear. No response. “Alex?” she asked again, her voice going up an octave with worry.

“Supergirl,” Alex’s voice finally came through, breathless and unsteady. “L-Corp. Go.” The connection was breaking up, and Kara could barely understand her, only hearing the word L-Corp.

Kara shot up, up over the crowds, and looking down she could see the police and DEO agents weaving through the mass of people and trying to get them to stop before they truly began to stampede. Even though every cell in her body was demanding she fly down and help, Kara looked upward to the balcony that would either doom or save the city. 

“You need to get up there and stop this, Supergirl!” J’onn’s voice said urgently through her earpiece. “There are so many of them, people are getting attacked faster than we can stop the Children of Liberty.” 

“I’m on my way, J’onn.” 

\--  
Lena POV  
Lena didn’t know what to expect when she arrived at Metropolis. The flight was uneventful, thankfully, with only a momentary hint of panic running through the cabin when an unidentified object was found on their radar. But it disappeared as soon as it was detected—brushed off to be a child’s drone or model airplane. Lena, however, knew that a model airplane would never fly this high, and a child’s inexpensive drone wouldn’t either. But the look on her security’s face told her enough that she didn’t ask questions. 

As soon as they touched down in Metropolis, Lena was escorted straight to L-Corp. She used the time to work on L-Corp projects that she had been neglecting while she stayed in National City. Not that this branch was by any means falling into disuse, it was just that the Metropolis branch now acted as more of a distribution point for whatever L-Corp was doing in National City. However, throughout all her work, her mind kept drifting back to the inevitable confrontation with Kara; her skin practically itching for the moment when Lena would inevitably sense the moment she landed on her balcony. Lena always knew when Kara arrived before she saw her. It was the shift in the air—the way the world turned< to accommodate Kara rather than the other way around. 

Eventually night began to fall, and Lena settled down at her desk with a knuckle’s worth of scotch as she shifted through the monotonous paperwork of corporate life. The scotch dulled her mind just slightly, enough that the excitement of confronting Kara had changed into annoyance. Where was she? Shouldn’t she be here by now?

Whatever Leviathan had been working toward hadn’t happened either. Perhaps it was just another game to pull Lena into the Luthor-side of her personality. It was of no consequence to Lena, as long as she got what she wanted in the end. 

The sound of the first explosion broke her line of thinking. She swiveled her chair to face the balcony window. Her building was located behind several skyscrapers bearing the name of famous banks which blocked her view of anything other than a giant cloud of smoke that was billowing up toward the twilight sky. In less than ten minutes she could hear the thunderous chop of helicopters as they flew towards the wreckage of the building. Not long after, Lena could see streams of people running out of buildings on her street. She was too high up to hear anything, but the way they moved looked frantic and desperate.

_Leviathan was playing the fear card. How unoriginal._ Lena thought to herself as she sipped her drink.  
As more explosions were set off throughout the city and the crowds below began to stampede, Lena could see a flash of red and blue flit past her window. Her heart leapt as she leaned forward in her chair as her brain assumed it was Kara, but the dark hair that accompanied the red and blue had her falling back. 

_“Of course,”_ she thought. _“Metropolis was Superman’s territory. He would be taking the lead here, not Supergirl.”_

It was exactly how Leviathan had planned it. Superman wouldn’t be with Kara to confront her because he was too busy saving the city. Lena was surprised Kara would show up at L-Corp at all, if she was being honest. Kara was usually the first to save the citizens and confront the mastermind later.

Standing up, she opened the door to the balcony and stepped out. People were beginning to stampede below, the sound of screeching tires and the crunching of metal was audible even from the 40th floor. 

“Lena!” 

Lena looked up to see Supergirl- or should she call her Kara- floating slightly above her balcony. 

Lena let out a mirthless laugh. _Finally_ “Come to stop me, Supergirl? It’s too late.”

“Lena, why did you do this? You are better than this. You were good.” Kara sounded almost like she was crying. 

“Oh, Supergirl. I was never good. I am a Luthor, after all. Perhaps next time you keep a secret from your best friend, you should consider the consequences.”

The helicopter search lights illuminated Supergirl’s face. A single tear shone in the bright light as she glided closer to Lena, but Lena stepped back and pulled out the gun she had been hiding all day. The move had its intended effect, and Lena could see exactly when Kara realized these were Kryptonite bullets.

Kara struggled closer. “Lena, I am so sorry. I wanted to tell you.”  
She laughed again, using the burning in her eyes to fuel her anger. “You don’t get to apologize, Supergirl. You caused this. I tried to be good for Kara. But it turns out Kara, my best friend, was using me. You’re no better than Lex.”

Kara flinched at the insult, and some small part of her cried out. Lena just wanted friends. Her friends. Who had girls’ nights, who had weekly game nights. But they all lied to her, used her, and manipulated her. 

“Lena, please, people are dying!” Kara begged. 

“Let them.”

Lena didn’t particularly care about the screaming citizens below them, or the damage that Leviathan was causing by unleashing whatever crazy weapon they had concocted. Lena was finally going to get her chance at revenge on Kara. She raised her arm, pointing the gun squarely at Kara’s chest. 

Kara was obviously struggling due to the proximity of the Kryptonite. When she spoke again, her voice was tight and strained. “Let me explain, please.” 

Lena gripped the gun tightly, fighting to not let it waver an inch. “Explain what? How you lied to my face for years? How everyone was in on the secret but no one bothered to tell me? I must have looked so _stupid_ , all those nights we spent together and everyone was in on the secret. Did you ever stop to think about how that would make me feel?”

She should do it now. She should pull the trigger and end this. It would be so easy, like flipping a switch. One moment, Kara Danvers and Supergirl were alive. The next moment she would be gone—National City’s hero killed by her own former best friend. It was a horrible parallel to Lex and Superman, but Lena would do what she had to. Finish what Lex started if need be. Lena placed her finger on the trigger.

“I want you to understand that it wasn’t because of your family that I didn’t tell you.” Kara said, her voice near a whisper and tears streaming silently down her face. 

“Then what could possibly make you think that you should keep something like that from me?” Lena scoffed.

Kara took a deep breath and walked forward until the barrel of the gun was pressing against her chest, right over the House of El sigil. “Lena, I lost my whole planet. I lost my family, my home, my future. I came to earth with no one after spending years in the Phantom Zone, thinking that I’d die there and never see another person ever again.” 

Lena adjusted her grip on the gun and flexed her finger on the trigger, uncertain where this was going. 

When she didn’t say anything, Kara continued. “Then I came to Earth. When Kal-El pulled me out of my pod...I was stronger. I could fly, freeze things with my breath and shoot lasers out of my eyes. I was different and even when I used my powers I still stood out at school and work. But then I met you,” Kara laughed a little, a pained smile on her face as she started outright crying. “And it was like I was home. You looked at me and saw Kara Danvers, not Kara Zor-El or some weird girl that showed up in your office with Clark Kent. I looked at you and my world finally made sense.” 

Something brushed against Lena’s cheek softly. She slowly raised one hand up and brushed it away, not moving the gun an inch. She was more than surprised when her finger came away...wet? When had she started crying? Lena tried to hold on to the familiar anger that lay inside her, but found it slipping away as fast as a wave at the beach. 

“So shoot me if you want, Lena.” Kara rasped as her own tears ran down her cheeks. “It’s okay. I forgive you. I’m sorry for lying to you, but I’m not sorry for loving you.” There was a heartbeat of silence as Lena desperately tried to refocus her thoughts. Kara loved her? Kara was here, telling Lena to shoot her? She should be angry and betrayed, but all she felt was confusion. Slowly she dropped her arm that was holding the gun. Kara let out a relieved breath, but Lena wasn’t paying attention to her. What was she thinking, killing Supergirl? Her Kara? Lena should have known they could have worked through things. What had Leviathan done to her?  
“Kara...” Lena whispered and fell to her knees. What had she done? 

Strong arms wrapped around her as she crumpled to the ground and started to cry. She had helped terrorists hurt people. She had almost killed her best friend. The person sh loved most in this world. She had been ready to pull the trigger. She had _wanted_ to.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Kara.” 

“It’s going to be okay, Lena.” Kara whispered into her hair, followed by a gentle kiss. “We can fix this.” 

“I hurt people, I hurt people.” Lena cried, hiding her face with her hands. She didn’t deserve Kara’s comfort. She deserved to be locked in a jail cell and forgotten about.

“Lena,” Kara said, gently pulling her hands away. “You have to tell me where they are.” 

“I don’t know.” Lena cried miserably. “They’re called Leviathan. They set all this up.”  
Kara rubbed her back in long soothing strokes. “Lena, I know you’re upset. But I need you to help me stop these guys right now, okay?” 

Lena took a deep shaky breath and tried to force her emotions back into their assigned tiny boxes. A throbbing headache that she knew now signaled her coming out of whatever drug induced state Leviathan had kept her in started at the base of her skull. 

“Okay,” she said, wiping her tear streaked face with her hands. “Okay. I don’t know much, but the plan they had for me was for Superman to work on saving citizens while you came here. After I had...taken care of you, it was assumed that Superman would be here to try and save you. Or at least avenge you.” 

Kara thought for a moment. “So they expected Superman to be here. That must mean that they had something planned for after he was out of the picture.” 

Lena nodded gravely. “Unfortunately they only had me build part of it and didn’t explain what it was or what it was for.”  
“What part did you build?” 

“It was a motherboard of some kind. I didn’t get to know what it controlled, which as you can imagine made making it work was quite a challenge. Daniel said that it was better if I didn’t know the whole picture, and that his team didn’t know everything either.” 

“Daniel...Atlas?” Kara asked slowly. 

“Yes, of AtlasTech. What do you know about him?” Lena asked, her brows furrowed slightly in confusion.

“Well...he’s went missing for weeks. then he randomly shows up at AtlasTech here in Metropolis like nothing changed. Refused to speak to the police and everything.” 

“Leviathan did the same thing for me. I was allowed to go back to keep up the appearance that everything was fine. That was when you came to visit.” 

Kara nodded, a distant look on her face. A sudden crash had them both leaping back, Kara using her cape to shroud Lena from any danger. The crash had been Lena’s office door being ripped off the hinges and flung into the hallway behind the intruder. The intruder was a man—or a man-like machine, Lena supposed. There was no reason to suspect that it was anything other than human, if not for the hardened eyes of pure black. 

Lena scrambled to stand up as Kara fell into a fighting stance beside her. “Who are you?” She demanded.

“Oh, who am I not?” The man replied, definitely not sounding human now, as if whoever had built him hadn’t take the time to program a human voice. He spoke like someone was grating a steel pipe with a cheese grater. “I am Agent Liberty, I am Leviathan, I am god.” He let out a metallic laugh. 

“So Leviathan sent you.” Lena said, more statement than question.

“You should know, Lena Luthor, you created me.” 

Her blood turned to ice. “What is your purpose?” 

“Leviathan will not be played for a fool. They knew you would see Kara Danvers and crumble immediately. Counted on it, actually.” The robot-man began walking leisurely around the room, causing Kara to step in front of Lena ever so slightly. Even in this moment, Lena noticed Kara defending her.

“What made them so sure? Whatever they injected me with seemed to work well enough to make me want to kill her.” Lena tried not to notice how Kara flinched slightly at that, but it was hard to focus on anything when she was so close.

“Leviathan knew your love for her would be no match for the HRV-4 injection.” The robot said with a feigned sigh. “I was sent to finish your job when you failed.” 

The robot leapt at them then, Lena stepping backwards as Kara flung herself at the robot to intercept. She watched them grapple for a few heartbeats, the robot getting in several well aimed punches to Kara’s head but Kara easily recovering like she hadn’t felt them. Kara was on the ground, but she used the angle to kick the robot back into the wall. 

The crash of the robot into the wall was enough to shake Lena out of her thoughts. She stumbled over to her desk where an idea hit her like a brick wall. “Kara, I might be able to shut him down from here!” she yelled as the robot picked himself out of the rubble. “Keep him busy.” 

“With pleasure.” Kara growled, balling her fists and swinging. 

Lena was able to find a way in seconds. It looked as if whoever had made this robot made him run on _wi-fi_ of all things. She was able to disconnect him in seconds, and he powered-down mid punch.

Kara stopped, confused. “That was it?” 

Lena let out a shaky laugh. “I think so.” 

“He spoke quite human, didn’t he?” Lena asked suddenly. “His voice, it was all robot. But his mannerisms...they were definitely human.” 

“Why make a robot that connects to wi-fi?” Kara mused. “Unless you go along with it to set it up?” 

The realization hit them both at the same time. “Someone was controlling it.” They said at the same time. 

Lena pulled up the security feed on her desk, brushing away a few stray pieces of rock that had fallen onto the desk during the fight. 

“Everyone should be gone but us,” Lena said as she clicked through the camera. “It’s nearly midnight, even the janitors have gone home.” 

Finally she stopped on a camera that had a familiar face. “It’s her.” Lena gasped. 

“Who is that, Lena?” Kara asked, her brows furrowing in concern.

“The lady who did this to me in the first place.” Lena said coldly. “She’s in charge. She kidnapped me and Daniel and injected us with that serum so we would do her work.” 

“What floor is that?” Kara asked tightly. 

“17.” Lena said, and before she could say anything else, Kara shot down _through her floor_. 

It was less than ten seconds before Kara returned through the same hole she created, but this time holding a woman in her sixties in her iron tight grasp. 

“This is the person?” Kara asked, and Lena could see the barely restrained anger in her eyes. 

Lena nodded. 

Kara pressed a finger to her ear. “Alex, we got Leviathan.” Lena could hear Alex’s voice, but she couldn’t understand what she was saying. Kara tightened her grip and said to the woman, “Call it off.”

“Why would I ever want to do something like that?” The woman replied easily. 

Kara walked over to Lena’s office window and punched it out easily, papers flying everywhere as the wind rushed in. To Lena’s surprise, Kara stuck the woman out the window. 

“Call. It. Off.” Kara ground out. 

The woman was scrambling in Kara’s hand, desperately swinging and looking for purchase. “You would never!” 

“You hurt thousands of people. You hurt my _friend_. What is one more life?” Kara threatened. Lena had never seen Kara this way, her arms trembling with anger, her face stone cold. She looked at Kara this way and had never loved her more. 

“Fine!” the woman squeaked. “I’ll call it off! Just bring me back inside!” 

Kara complied and brought her arm back in and released the woman. The woman pressed a button on her phone twice. Outside the busted window, Lena could see the crowds begin to slow as their assailants backed off. 

“I’ll be back,” Kara said to Lena. “You going to be okay?” 

Lena nodded, not taking her eyes off the window. “See you soon.” 

Lena could hear the _woosh_ of air as Kara took off with Leviathan out of the busted window, presumably to hand her over to Alex. She took a deep breath as she looked over the damaged city and prayed that she could be forgiven one last time.  
\--  
Six Months Later

The clean up of Metropolis had gone well, with L-Corp being at the forefront of the recovery efforts. There had been a lot of damage to apartments and small businesses, but with L-Corp and two Supers at the helm, things got together rather quickly. After a rough legal battle, Lena ended up having to serve several years of probation for her part in the destruction since she was able to recant her story about the mind control and kidnapping.

Kara and Lena had tentatively gone on a not-date-date-thing at an upscale steakhouse. She had apologized only a zillion times for lying about her identity, to which Lena merely replied that she had wrecked a city and that there was no reason to be upset anymore. Finally they had just decided to move on, to allow their relationship to recover naturally with this new information. Word on the street had gotten around that Supergirl had made up with Lena Luthor, so the public reluctantly followed suit.  
Lena was still struggling with the consequences of her actions. Many companies had backed out of deals, citing her “mental and emotional instability” as their reasoning, and no amount of persuasion from Lena herself or Kara as Supergirl could sway them from their decisions. L-Corp stocks took a hit, but overall they would be fine in the next fiscal year (even if Lena had secretly taken a steep pay cut herself in order to bolster her employee’s pay, but Kara didn’t need to know that. It was the least she could do.)

Whether they were friends or girlfriends, Kara and Lena were just content to be together above all things. As long as Lena had Kara, Lena could forgive herself. As long as Kara had Lena, she was home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Consequences? Don't know her. Thank you to everyone who made it this far on this crazy journey of my first supercorp fic. Love you guys <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you like what I do and want more, encourage me with a [Coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/axj0504)!


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